FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Susan Bucher, the longtime supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, Fla., was suspended Friday by Gov. Ron DeSantis following a series of post-election controversies.
At a news conference at The Historical Museum of Palm Beach, DeSantis said he would follow Secretary of State Mike Ertel's recommendation to suspend Bucher in order "to right the ship" in Palm Beach County.
DeSantis said Palm Beach County didn't complete the state-mandated recounts until after Christmas, tarnishing the state's image and creating a national embarrassment.
"Palm Beach County stands alone in that level of ineptitude," DeSantis said. "They truly have been the keystone cops of election administration."
Bucher was the second South Florida elections supervisor to be suspended over the 2018 midterm recount. DeSantis' predecessor, Rick Scott, suspended Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes from office and replaced her with lawyer Pete Antonacci, who served under Scott in a variety of high-profile positions.
On Friday, DeSantis also announced that he would accept Snipes' resignation, effective Jan. 4, "saving the taxpayers of Florida" a large amount of money.
A federal judge on Jan. 9 ruled that Scott had violated Snipes' due process rights, and ordered the state to hear her side of the story no later than March 31. DeSantis' action would remove her suspension and the requested need for a hearing.
DeSantis on Friday named Wendy Link, a Palm Beach County real estate lawyer and a member of the state university system board of trustees, as Bucher's replacement. DeSantis said Link does not plan to run for re-election; she will serve until 2020.
Link said she will focus on conducting impartial and nonpartisan elections, along with replacing outdated voting equipment that led to counting delays.
"I am going to ensure Palm Beach County is well prepared for every election," she said.
Reached Friday morning before the news conference, Bucher said she had no knowledge of a suspension.
"He's going to have to prove I did anything wrong," Bucher said. "They (the state) had (election) monitors here 24-7."
Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon said she has spoken to Bucher, a close friend, who said she's going to challenge the suspension.
Gannon, who is elected, said the governor's move sets a bad precedent. She questioned whether she could be suspended for political reasons if her office sends a tax bill to the wrong address.
"If it could happen to her, it could happen to me," said Gannon, a former Democratic state lawmaker who attended the announcement.
DeSantis issued a lengthy executive order that delineated the reasons for Bucher's suspension. The order was based in large part on a letter dated Jan. 17 from the state's chief elections official, Ertel, who described Bucher's "combative incompetence over the years" and harshly criticized her handling of the 2018 election.
Ertel said Bucher was the only election supervisor in the state who did not buy servers sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to guard against cyberterrorism. Ertel said Bucher placed a polling place inside a gated community in violation of state law; struggled to submit results to the state on a timely basis; refused to allow damaged ballots to be duplicated in the canvassing board's presence; and blocked the public and news media from observing ballot-review processes.
"Throughout the recount," Ertel wrote, "Supervisor Bucher blamed faulty equipment for her inability to complete the multiple recounts on time. ... Supervisor Bucher had years of foreknowledge that her county needed to buy new equipment, yet she chose not to."
Ertel noted that Palm Beach was the only county in the state that failed to meet all ordered machine and manual recount deadlines _ also a violation of state law, he said.
Ertel said that the state plans to decertify the aging vote tabulation system used in Palm Beach County by June 1, and he urged DeSantis to suspend Bucher from office, "allowing fresh, competent leadership to take the reins of the much-maligned office."
Shortly after Friday's announcement, the head of the Florida Democratic Party, Terrie Rizzo, issued a statement saying, "In the United States, our elections are sacred and our elections supervisors are democratically elected _ the Governor's recent power grab, removing Democrats from elected positions, including Susan Bucher, should be seen for what it is, a gross overreach and a politically motivated move to consolidate power and obstruct the will of the people."
A group of about a dozen or so onlookers who attended the West Palm Beach news conference shouted their disapproval, booing DeSantis and yelling "not our governor" and "lies." Ramona Barbagallo, 57, a West Palm Beach Democratic volunteer, held a sign that read: "BULL!" She said she volunteered at the tabulation during the recount, and she thought Bucher worked as hard as she could to conduct the recount.
"I don't think we are an embarrassment to the nation," she said. "This is how democracy works."
Another group stood around the governor and cheered. One person wore a DeSantis button on her shirt, while another had a Donald Trump hat on.
Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, a DeSantis ally and adviser, had tweeted Friday morning: "Bucher violated court orders, polluted provisional ballots w/ballots not approved by the canvassing board, failed to maintain equipment and even overheated elections equipment by jamming it w/a paper clip. Anyone else tired of being embarrassed by Palm Beach Co. during elections?"
Link, 54, a Republican, is from Boynton Beach and a founding partner of the West Palm Beach law firm Ackerman, Link & Sartory.
Bucher, 60, a Democrat and a native of Escondido, Calif., was elected to the Palm Beach County supervisor office in 2008 and re-elected in 2012 and 2016. She had already drawn one opponent for an anticipated 2020 race. Before winning the elections post, she was a Democratic state representative for eight years.
Bucher came under intense criticism in November over her office's handling of recounts in three statewide elections. A judge chastised her for delays in providing copies of duplicated ballots to the campaign of Rick Scott, who narrowly defeated Sen. Bill Nelson in a U.S. Senate race.
Unlike in Broward County, the recount issues in Palm Beach County were primarily machine-induced. Palm Beach was the only county in the state still using voting machines purchased in 2007 by Bucher's predecessor. The machines were incapable of counting races simultaneously. Instead, each of the four recounts in Palm Beach County _ the governor, Senate and agriculture commissioner races as well as a state House race _ had to be counted separately.
Compounding the problem, the machines broke down halfway through the recount, an issue that the manufacturer stated was due to handling a volume of ballots for which they were unintended.
Bucher had intended to buy new machines as close to 2020 as possible, to guarantee they were in line with new disability requirements set to go into effect that year, she said at the time of the recount. In May, she requested more than $11 million for new voting machines from the Palm Beach County Commission. Other supervisors had already purchased new machines that should comply with the new rules. Bucher held out, assuming the 2018 midterm would be like most others and worrying that machines purchased too early wouldn't be in compliance with the 2020 rules.
"We anticipated we would have a pretty quiet midterm election as we used to," she said as the recount got underway. "We never anticipated that these machines would have to run (all day) and perform four recounts."
Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, said early Friday there has been a run of problems at the Bucher-run office, which became apparent beyond the boundaries of Palm Beach County during the 2018 election and recount.
"I'm not saying the problems were Brenda Snipes level," he said. "But it's been pretty bad. And I think if we had someone in charge who had a better grasp on the job, we could at least be among the other 65 counties who ran their election operations smoothly. We can't continue to be the laughing stock of the whole state and the nation."
Bucher is the third high-level elected official to be suspended by DeSantis, who took office 11 days ago. The new governor suspended Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel for alleged incompetence in his handling of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018, and suspended the school superintendent in Okaloosa County, Mary Beth Jackson. Jackson was the subject of a critical report that by a grand jury that investigated allegations of physical abuse of an autistic child by a special education teacher.
