After of years of fighting for election integrity in Florida, there seems to be an increasingly tyrannical attitude coming from the Florida GOP. From the moment Dan Schultz’s Precinct Strategy starting activating more and more people to join in their local politics, the entrenched Florida GOP, has been undermining any attempt for reforms.
It goes waaaaaay past election integrity, but that is how the FL GOP is trying control the levers of power.
Two Florida House Bills are currently being pushed through. If passed, combined they will remake everything in Florida elections. Evaluated separately, they will make you scratch your head, but together it should make you fall our of your chair.
Thanks to many of the folks reading this, FL Senator Ingoglia’s SB1414 has been quietly set aside, but now the equally bad House version, HB1381 is being pushed through.
Much like Ingoglia’s attempt, this House Bill would also reclassify many of the reports election integrity advocated NEED to monitor and audit election as protected items. Essentially removing all of what remains for citizens to audit their elections. We are already severely limited to what we can observe. Most of what REALLY happens in our elections is hidden in the boxes of paper ballots we cannot review and the black box software we are told to trust.
And just like SB 1414, HB 1381 will replace the “Post Election Audit” with yet another election vendor who will claim that the digital reproduction they present was the real election, since that will be used to certify the elections.
And much like Georgia and Arizona, we will be in a DIGITAL HELL where we can never prove that digital production was falsified because we will NEVER get to reconcile it against the boxed up paper ballots.
So this HB 1381 would nail the door shut on any remaining ability to show our elections are being rigged.
And it gets worse….
Because the second set of bills being pushed by Rep Black, HB 1249 and SB 1098 sponsored by Senator Martin would give the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) sole discretion on who could run as a Republican in the state of Florida.
If you have been following my posts, I mentioned that the RPOF is currently shutting down conservative clubs and MAGA groups that support Trump’s principles. The Florida Republican Assembly is currently in a legal battle with the RPOF because its members were being systematically purged from their duly elected executive committee seats all over the state.
In those recent court hearings, the RPOF’s attorney was arguing that the Republican Party of Florida is a PRIVATE CLUB that can fully control who is allowed and not allowed to be member. Some may nod their head at this one, but what the wider argument then becomes is HOW IS THIS BEING DONE?
Previously, that was controlled by local elections as the entire RPOF was organized around county-base Republican Executive Committees (RECs). Those local RECs would then elected committee men & women to then run the state organizers through another levels of voting. This was supposed to be inherent with the “bottoms-up” Republican principle.
That has all been corrupted in the last 4 years. Now the state group went full blown tyrannical and started shutting down both local RECs and Trump Clubs if they found out too much of their membership were MAGA Trump supporters and their leadership shifted towards Trump’s principles.
There’re a growing list of counties all over Florida where the RPOF has come down and (tried) to shut down the grassroots efforts. Osceola, Manatee, St. Johns, and Lake County are a few.
So what does all this mean?
Well a little known story in Lake County Florida may demonstrate the playbook going forward.
Cary Baker was a model public servant who dedicated his life to multiple roles in Florida politics. He served as our FL Senator and FL House Representative and most recently our Property Appraiser in Lake County since 2012.
A distinguish Army Guardsman, Baker had often been a local champion for Constitutional Issues, especially the 2nd Amendment. Not hard to find proof of that since he is also the owner of A.W. Peterson Gun Shop, one of oldest active gun shop in America.
Baker was so good at being the property appraiser, that he typically ran completely unopposed. I myself moved to Lake County because I found it to be one of the fairest for property taxes in Florida and was always impressed by the character of people like Baker who kept those offices.
But last year, there was a local Republican coup against him.
Baker was such a good steward of local money, that he would often tell his supporters at the local REC, that he would file as an independent candidate as long as he was unopposed. This would save his Republican supporters thousands of dollars on the filing fees. But of course, that also meant less money to the Republican Party of Florida who receives those fees.
Baker walked into Lake County’s SOE Alan Hays’s office last year about 10 minutes before the noon deadline as he always did. And confident he was running unopposed again, filled out the paperwork to run as an independent again.
As he walked out the door close to noon, the door was locked behind him. In the office with Alan Hays was the current tax collector David Jordan and his brother Mark Jordan. Mark Jordon told Baker, that he had just completed his paperwork to run for the local hospital board.
But after locking the door, Hays, and the Jordan brothers went work. They destroy Mark Jordon’s hospital board candidacy paperwork and registered Mark Jordan as THE ONLY REPUBLICAN RUNNING FOR LAKE COUNTY PROPERTY APPRAISER.
Baker was obviously incensed, but so were the local Republicans that supported him for years. The Lake County REC voted to censor the David Jordan, but I always wondered why little attention was paid to SOE Alan Hays who broke Florida law in taking Mark Jordan’s paperwork AFTER the deadline.
Baker tried to sue, but like the weaponize justice system we have seen all over the US, his case was thrown out.
So what happened? You would think a local, super popular incumbent would have no issue keeping his seat right?
Well, unfortunately this is a harbinger of things to come. Because most people don’t follow local politics. And the Republican Party of Florida fully understands this.
All the Republican Party of Florida had to do is put an “R” next to Mark Jordan name and now he is the Lake County, Property Tax Appraiser.
You have probably seen the print and social media post where a cut out of Trump giving a thumbs up is photoshopped into a picture with a Republican candidate. And do you think anything more matters for most people other than “Oh, Trump supports this guy?”
Well, all the Republican Party of Florida has to do is change the law so it gets to anoint who is allowed to use that “R” on the ballot. A slight change to the digital hell Georgia and Arizona currently operate in will make sure you NEVER can prove that your grassroots candidate actually out performed them.
As I often say, elections are RIGGED waaaaaaaay before election day.
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