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“If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
― James Madison
Below is an email conversation I recently had with Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd.
QUESTION:
The Florida Association of Supervisors of Elections should have no standing and should not participate in any discussions of Election Integrity legislation.
Who do they represent? The administrative state that operates our election process. That does not entitle them to have an opinion. They are a bunch of unionized government bureaucrats.
Where are they found in the Constitution? Nowhere!
They were the main voice in our proposed election integrity bill, and it should be vetoed!
RESPONSE:
“Your question: Where are they found in the Constitution? You answered your own question with an emphatic Nowhere!
Here is the legal answer:
Florida Constitution Article VIII sec. 1(d)
COUNTY OFFICERS. There shall be elected by the electors of each county, for terms of four years, a sheriff, a tax collector, a property appraiser, a supervisor of elections, and a clerk of the circuit court.
Also see 98.015
A supervisor of elections shall be elected in each county at the general election in each year the number of which is a multiple of four for a 4-year term commencing on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in January succeeding his or her election. Each supervisor shall, before performing any of his or her duties, take the oath prescribed in s. 5, Art. II of the State Constitution.
Supervisors are constitutional officers elected by and responsible to the people in the county they serve.
I hope you find this information helpful.”
My counter:
Yes, we need the administrative state to operate our elections.
But we must recognize that, especially when organized collectively like the FASOE, they have different interests than individual citizens.
The administrative state is staffed by unionized government bureaucrats, who lean left and support progressive government.
As Madison put it in the Federalist Papers, we need government to run our elections, but we must guard against government using the power we grant it to usurp our freedom.
That is what the FASOE is doing, not only with its harassment language (properly rejected), but also with its refusals to disclose information about machine voting.
Don’t Tread On Me!
Eduardo Vidal is a lawyer and political activist. His family brought him when he was nine years old from Cuba to the USA, but now the rule of law has been eroded in the USA as well, and we are turning into Cuba and the rest of Latin America.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7196640-if-men-were-angels-no-government-would-be-necessary-if
Thanks for keeping us informed on election law events in FL. You are one of the only FL publications consistently and accurately reporting on this.
The actual question was never answered. The answer pertained to the individual Constitutional county officers, not to a group the lobbies the legislature. The question actually was “Where in the Constitution can we find “Florida Supervisors of Elections, Inc.”? The correct answer is “nowhere”. Florida Supervisors of Elections, Inc. Is a 501(c)(6) group that was formed in 1946 and incorporated in 1964. Its sole purpose is to lobby and they have always been a liberal group. Try going to one of their meetings. Why are some of their meetings on the other side of the country? What are they hiding?
For the Secretary of State to say that election administrators should participate in the legislative process for election integrity, is like saying that teachers’ unions should participate in the legislative process for school choice!