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2018 Elections Tag

Apparently, Robert "Beto" O'Rourke was a member of a teenage hacking group called Cult of the Dead Cow. An intrepid Reuters reporter, who was researching a book at the time, tracked down and confirmed this story prior to the 2018 midterms, but agreed to hold it until after Texas voters headed to the polls to vote for their choice for Senate.  In that race, O'Rourke lost to incumbent Senator Ted Cruz (R).

According to Politico, the GOP finally has an answer to the Democrat Party's ActBlue, which brought in over $700 million small-dollar donations in 2018:
Following weeks of closed-door discussions, Republicans have agreed to create a new platform dubbed Patriot Pass, which will be used to cultivate and process online donations. The GOP — whose jungle-like ecosystem of vendors has long fought bitterly over contracts and dollars — has struggled in the past to create such a unified system.

In December, I blogged about a New York Times report that described how Democratic tech experts adopted Russian tactics supposedly used in the 2016 election in order to help Democrat Doug Jones defeat Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race in 2017. Three more reports have come out detailing how Democrat operatives, funded by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (who launched fake political pages and ads on Facebook during the midterms in November) while another group did the same in the Alabama Senate race.

Outgoing Broward County Supervisor of Elections has vowed to fight in court after Gov. Rick Scott suspended her "due to misfeasance, incompetence and neglect of duty." A report from The Tampa Bay Times may not help Snipes since a Broward County self-evaluation shows during the election, the county had problem after problem like mechanical errors, staffing shortages, and procedural violations.

I'm so old, I remember when Brenda Snipes, the controversial and disgraced Broward County Supervisor of Elections resigned after a firestorm of controversy over her handling of ballot counting in the 2018 midterms. The resignation was effective January 4, 2019, the day after Republican Rick Scott's term as Governor was to end and he was to move on to the U.S. Senate, having defeated Bill Nelson.

Brenda Snipes, the Broward County Election Supervisor, is credited with making Florida ballot counting a joke, once again. Republican Governor Rick Scott won the Senate race despite all the problems in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, where Bill Nelson closed the gap significantly after election day. Republican Ron DeSantis held off Andrew Gillum's post-election day surge as well, though it wasn't as close.

Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes submitted her resignation a few weeks ago after she faced criticism over how the county handled the vote counting on November 6. This latest election is not the only controversy she had during her tenure. It looks like she won't suffer much without her job because reports have come out that Snipes will receive over $130,000 in pensions. From Fox News:
Snipes, 75, already receives a pension of more than $58,000 from her time as an educator and is poised to collect another $71,000 for 15 years as an elected official, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

Mississippi citizens hit the polls today to vote in the special election for the senate seat after Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who took over in April after Thad Cochran retired, and Democrat Mike Espy tied on Election Day. President Donald Trump went to Mississippi on Monday night in one final attempt to keep the seat red after controversies swamped Hyde-Smith for the past few weeks. However, recent polls showed Hyde-Smith with a 10 point lead.

The Washington Post is facing backlash over its "analysis" piece entitled "What’s up with all those black men who voted for the Republican in the Georgia governor’s race?". The article begins with the obligatory attack on white women, but we aren't the "real" target this time.  Instead, the author is enraged that between 8% and 11% of black men voted for Democrat Stacey Abrams' opponent, Republican Brian Kemp.