The Great Alachua County REC Debacle of 2022/2023
or "How they stole an election on my Christmas vacation"
Just when you think that the November Elections are over, and you can rest for a few minutes, the Republican Executive Committee Board Elections come along in Florida, every December in ‘even’ years. Every county REC elects their executive board (Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer) to serve for the next 2 years. This year is certainly no different, or is it?
So, a little quick background… the CMC (County Model Constitution) says the board elections must take place within 30 days of Dec 1st, and are not subject to recall.
CMC, ARTICLE IV: Organizational Meeting and Election of Officers
Section 1 - The outgoing chairman of the Republican County Executive Committee shall, within thirty (30) days after the committee members take office (December 1), call an organizational meeting for the purpose of electing officers. It shall be the responsibility of the outgoing chairman to open the meeting, and the first order of business shall be the election of the chairman and vice-chairman as set forth in the rules and bylaws as promulgated by the State Executive Committee. Thereafter, the new chairman shall preside, and the agenda shall include, but not limited to, the election of a secretary and a treasurer, the filing of any vacancies on the committee, and any other business which may appropriately come before the committee. The above officers shall be members of the County Executive Committee, and all county party officers shall be elected for a two year term until the next organizational meeting. At the conclusion of each two year term officers shall be elected in the same manner as is required at the organizational meeting. Officer elections held at the organizational meetings are final and are not subject to recall.
Seems pretty cut and dry, right? Well, not in Alachua County (Gainesville). It seems that, while typing up the minutes of the December 8th organizational meeting of the Alachua REC, some days later, Secretary Gwen Qualizza noticed that the vote total received by the candidates for Chair added up to 78 votes cast, but they can only account for 75 eligible voters in the room. This could indicate that someone allowed ineligble voters into the closed meeting, or three people voted twice. Nobody claims to know which. And, it almost doesn’t matter. Almost. Cheating is cheating, no matter which method was to blame. More than likely it is simply due to 3 eligible voting members failing to sign in, and none of this is necessary, at all. They appear to be pretending that they couldn’t be expected to see this coming. After all, it’s not as if the Sarasota election on December 1st, produced ten more votes than voters, right? Wrong. So, how did this happen again? By Dec. 8th, everyone had heard about Sarasota’s debacle from a week earlier, where it is reported that Joe Gruters (Sarasota Chair and RPOF Chair) fixed a similar issue in Sarasota’s election, when he apparently grabbed a handful of ballots and tossed them in the trash to make the votes equal the number of voters. “Problem solved”, eh Joe?
Let’s examine what we do know from Alachua. Tim Marden challenged Ed Braddy. America-First vs. RINO establishment. Tim won the election by two votes. And, that wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?!
So, what they decided to do was to hold a new election, for chair only, in a January meeting. Furthermore, they announced that any new members since the December meeting would also be allowed to vote. If someone was to cheat by at least three votes, expecting it to be enough, then later realizes that it wasn’t, should they now get to pack more illegal votes? And, if they're doing that by allowing additional new members to join since the December election, to vote in a recount, does that not amount to packing the court, I mean room? This violates the above cited CMC Rules in two ways. First, the election must take place within 30 days of Dec 1st, not in January. Secondly, and probably most importantly, when that meeting was adjourned, all elections were final, and not subject to recall. All sales were final. All bets were off.
Imagine, if you will, Trump winning the 2016 election and instead of the Nobama administration doing the whole Steele Dossier, FISA-court, FBI-collusion, CNN-stories debacle, they instead found an ‘irregularity’ in the votes (not hard to do, they're full of irregularities on a good day, but don’t get me started on that topic, we’ll be here all day, and this article will be 50,000 words long) and declared the election void due to those irregularities, and now they were going to hold a new election in February (after Congress’ deadline to certify), but this time more newly registered illegal aliens, I mean voters, were going to be allowed to vote.
Can you imagine the outrage in the streets in Dec 2016/Jan 2017? It would make the fake J-6 farce look like nothing. Ok, J-6 was nothing but another Red-Flag event, so bad example. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if Alachua’s January Meeting was a flurry of “Points of Order” for twice-violating the rules, AND requiring that the membership violate their oaths to uphold those rules. The only question will be how many people will raise that Point of Order, 75 or 78? And, of course, when the chair rules against the PoO, the motion-maker will have to move, and get seconded, a motion to overrule the chair’s decision. Luckily, this vote only requires a simple majority of 50%+1, and it appears that they have 50%+2 (not to mention all of the members who voted for Ed, but aren’t willing to violate their oath). No, I think this re-elction is dead on arrival, and Alachua needs to come to grips with that, and work towards a solution for the future, to curtail such problems in the future. I will lay out below, how Lee County did just that.
After all, aren’t we “a nation of laws, rather than of men”? Are we not the Republican Party, supporting and defending the U.S. Constitution and the Republic? Would we not then also support the party’s Constitutions, Rules, and by-laws? Wouldn’t we adhere to RRoO (Robert’s Rules of Order), like every gov’t board, courtroom, church board, or HOA is required to do? Is this about Party first, or grift first?
This should be the biggest outrage in Alachua County right now. It appears they are colluding to steal the election plain and simple, whether we say so, or not. So, we might as well say so. Apparently, these people are cut from the same cloth as democrats. Yes, Virginia, there is a Uniparty.
The election must take place within 30 days of Dec 1st.
The election must be certified (accepted) before that meeting is adjourned, and it was. Tim was declared the new Chair, at least for a few days. What a debacle. What is the correct solution? We’re in uncharted territory here, because REC elections are usually not so close, if there even is a challenger, at all. Normally, it is ‘bigly’ obvious.
In hashing out the several options:
“Leave it as certified”
“Hold a new election contrary to the very clear CMC Rules”
“Hold a new election and bring in enough votes to overcome the loss”
It seems that Option 3, “bring in more voters”, became the “agreed upon” course of action. Of course, who gets to pick these new electors? Who will they be? Will they be government employees of elected office holders in the county government or State’s Attorney's Office, whose campaigns are run by some of these old guard cronies? Will they be MAGA, or will they be hand-picked, to produce the RINO’s desired results? Well, honestly, who knows?! But, you have to wonder when you’re “packing the court” like this, what the motivation is, and… when you behave like this, “what does that make you”? As far as I’m concerned, allowing additional voters to join for the purpose of the election, is something straight out of “Rules for Radicals”. Killary would be proud.
And, just what are their justifications for this unprecedented and illegal course of action? Well, they did convince Tim to go along with it, saying that “you wouldn’t want to win this way, right?”, so they claim, “hey, everybody is in agreement”. And when confronted with these rules, they purported that Robert’s Rules of Order (RRoO) does provide for holding a new election, and that RRoO trumps the RPOF Constitution. But, hold on, RRoO cannot trump the Constitution, by-laws, or rules of any organization. RRoO even clearly says that. RRoO is a generic glue that fills in the common ground of the guiding documents. So, the whole RRoO excuse is fabricated, and if continued should be grounds for removal for a variety of reasons. And, the fact that Tim was convinced to go along with it is irrelevant. He does not own the rights of the members who voted and comprise the REC, and have rights and expectations that their vote will count, and that the rules, which all REC members swear an oath to uphold, will be adhered to. These are reasonable expectations. Now these members are being forced to violate their oath to uphold these rules. Neither Tim, nor Ed, possess the authority to enter into an agreement to violate the RPOF Constitution, CMC, RoP, or RRoO, let alone coerce others to do so. This game of “Heads I win, Tails you lose” has to stop. If the results had produced the opposite outcome, would we even be having this conversation? I’d bet not, but all bets are off.
In Lee County, we entered into negotiations weeks in advance, with SCM Matt Caldwell in order to have as clean, fair, and transparent a process as possible. First, we had a table to sign in. Only qualified members were on the member roster, although I still argue that 20 or so hadn’t been to a meeting since the last election (another topic for another day). They signed in to get their sticker name badge (required to vote), and advanced to table 2, to receive an unsealed envelope of four colored paper ballots for each race, which only had the name of the race printed on them. They signed in again that they received them, and removed the ballots and verified that they only had one of each color, in front of the staff, as well as representatives of the candidates watching from behind the table, like poll watchers. They then entered the room. The first vote of the chair race was conducted by the voters hand writing their vote and submitting in a clear plastic box in the front of the room, like they were going up for Communion in Church. The first vote did not produce a majority. White index cards were used for the subsequent 2 votes, until a majority was attained (although, I think going forward, new colored ballots should be used instead). The clear box was then placed on a table, where the SCM pulled and read each ballot and handed it to the SCW, who stacked them by candidate. This again was done in full witness of poll watchers, and the entire REC in the room. As the name was read by the SCM, the Chairman marked the tally on a white board for all to see and verify, after the vote was determined for chair. The SCM then recounted the total number of ballots in front of the room to ensure there were no discrepencies.
After the Chair and Vice-Chair were determined, they were installed, and the new chair conducted the remainder of the meeting, starting with Secretary and Treasurer elections, conducted in the same fashion. I contribute the successful election process to Matt Caldwell and the members who hashed out the process with him beforehand. Again, I would still make a few minor changes, but most of our requests were followed. If every REC conducted their elections in such a transparent way, much of the turmoil that we are seeing could have been avoided. This process will be added to our county by-laws for future success.
Marion County followed very similar transparent processes. At the end of election if the he candidates and voters feel there is an honest and transparent process both will accept the outcomes.
So after reading the article, I still cannot discern what happened. Did they vote again? Did they allow new members to vote?