By Chris Nelson. July 7, 2021. It looks like Broward County may be on track for a repeat of the 2020 Election. Speaking at a June 29 event at the Plantation American Legion organized by Floridians First, Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott attempted to reassure a group of skeptics that the 2022 elections would be transparent. "Our system has the utmost integrity," said Scott. "Our goal is to make our system as transparent as possible." Scott, a Democrat, was newly elected to the position last year. The previous Democrat to hold that position was Brenda Snipes who was removed for her mishandling of the 2018 election. Eyebrows were raised when Scott spoke of a new "Transparency Portal" which is promised to make ballots available online for public scrutiny after they are counted. "We are working with AWS, Amazon Web Services and we are going to create a portal where we are going to upload all the ballot images," said Scott to a chorus of chuckles. "After the election is over the images will be posted to a cloud-based server where you will be able to go in there and get a copy of those images." Amazon Web Services (AWS) is notorious for censoring conservatives and participated along with Apple and Google in the unprecedented cyber obliteration of the Conservative Social Media site Parler back in January. Scott said the posted ballots will not include identifying information or a serial number, rendering the system practically useless as an auditing tool.
The crowd of mostly Trump supporters who face Big Tech censorship on a regular basis were not satisfied. Enzo Alcindor asked, "Can the images be saved by a more trustworthy company than Amazon?" Scott replied that the only two companies with the "infrastructure to handle the job" are Amazon and Google and those were the only two companies considered by the County. Scott also boasted of a brand new facility that is to be built that he says will promote transparency but it will not be finished until after the 2022 Election. This election is pivotal for Floridians as it will determine if Governor Ron DeSantis will serve a second term.
(Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott)
The issue of voting machines with Internet connections was brought up by GOP Precinct Committeewoman Anna DeSenze. "How can I be sure these machines will not be connected to the Internet before, during, and after Election Day?" asked DeSenze. Scott admitted the voting machines are connected to a modem and use flash drives to store voting results. "Our ballots are scanned on an ES&S machine that is called the DS200," said Scott. "This is a distinct company from Dominion, although I don't have any problem with Dominion." (Read about the DS200 machine here: https://www.essvote.com/products/ds200/) "Those DS200s do have a modem that allows the results to be transmitted back to us on election night." According to Scott, Broward County will also be using a second relatively new Boston-based company called Clear Ballot for audits and recounts. On their website, Clear Ballot markets themselves as cutting edge in Mail-In Ballot usage. Their Mail-In system, Clear Vote, is used in states like Oregon and Washington which have embraced mail-in ballots for years and are also ironically Democrat strongholds. Clear Ballot brags that they were instrumental in helping to manage the tens of thousands of mail in ballots that flowed into Bucks County, Pennsylvania which famously tipped the scales for Joe Biden days after Election Day. Scott endured about one hour of intense questioning and concluded with his view of the Arizona audit. "It is a side show that I don't have time for."