How Florida rigged the election this time
Back in 2016, the election went about as expected nationwide, except for four key swing states, where the results were shocking, nonsensical, perfectly mathematically convenient for one party. Here in 2018, the election once again went about as expected across the nation, except in Florida, where the results were once against shocking, nonsensical, perfectly mathematically convenient for one party. So what just happened?
It’s not difficult to figure out that in 2016, the systemic and criminal collusion between the Donald Trump campaign, the Russian government, Russian hackers, and WikiLeaks resulted in the outcome in those four key swing states being altered. How exactly did hackers pull it off? That’s for Robert Mueller to ultimately determine, but the Senate Intel Committee has already pointed to Russian hackers deleting voter registrations ahead of election day, thus preventing a number of registered Democrats from being able to cast their votes. All that aside, there is no known evidence that the Russians were involved in altering the outcome of the 2018 elections.
For one thing, the results this time were largely what we expected across the nation. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, whose results were clearly altered by the Trump-Russia plot in 2016, all suddenly snapped back to normal and expected results in 2018. We did see Republican cheating around the nation, but it was fairly straightforward, and the perpetrators didn’t try to hide it. Kris Kobach cheated in Kansas and still lost. Brian Kemp cheated in Georgia and won, but the final polling averages suggested he was going to win anyway. North Dakota cheated against Native Americans, but they found a way to vote anyway.
The upshot is that all of these various forms of cheating in 2018, whether they worked or not, are easily explainable. Then there’s Florida. The final polling averages called for a clear victory by Andrew Gillum, and a more narrow victory for Bill Nelson. Yet when it was all said and done, they both lost, and Gillum somehow lost by a significantly larger margin than Nelson. The results in these two races in Florida make no mathematical sense, and they’re arguably the only notable election results in the nation that make no sense.
Of course we can point to a number of bizarre things in Florida in 2018. For instance, the ballot in Democratic stronghold Broward County was designed in a ridiculous manner which caused a number of voters to miss the Bill Nelson vs Rick Scott race entirely. Is this level of honest incompetence even possible? The county supervisor of elections is a Democrat, but she was originally appointed by then-Governor Jeb Bush, a Republican – and we all recall Jeb having meddled in the 2000 presidential election on his brother’s behalf.
But even that Broward ballot problem doesn’t fully explain the results. It may have taken ten thousand or more votes away from Bill Nelson, costing him the Senate election. But that would mean that Nelson won and Gillum lost – a nearly impossible result when you look at the polling averages in these two races. If Broward explains how Nelson was robbed, how was Gillum robbed?
There are some hints. For instance, as Andrew Gillum’s Republican opponent Ron DeSantis fell further behind in the polls in the final weeks of the race, he made the extremely unusual move of canceling all his interviews. Yes, he was terrible at giving interviews. But when you’re falling behind that close to election day, you do every interview that comes your way and take your chances, because you have to try to shake things up. Instead, DeSantis spent the whole time making interview decisions that a candidate would only make if they were pretty sure they were going to win by sitting tight.
Then there’s the fact that the often verbally reckless DeSantis all but disappeared after election day, allowing Donald Trump and Rick Scott – who was both the outgoing Governor and the Republican candidate for Senate – to do all the talking. DeSantis was fighting for his political life during the counting and recounting, but he had nothing to say? What did Trump and Scott say to DeSantis to make him comfortable enough to stay quiet?
The bottom line is that of all the states involved in 2016 Trump-Russia election cheating, Florida was the only one that once again cheated in 2018. And of all the states that did try their hand at blatant Republican cheating in 2018, Florida is the only one whose election results are unexplainable. The common thread in 2016 and 2018: Florida Governor Rick Scott, whom Trump just shoehorned into the Senate, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom Trump is now considering for U.S. Attorney General. Funny how that works.
