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Running for election, supervisor hides missing ballots

Tampa’s election chief Buddy Johnson seems more concerned with his own election than with performing his job. Appointed by Jeb! to serve out the term of Pam Iorio, Tampa’s new mayor, Buddy has repeatedly dropped the ball this election year.

The latest revelation stems from the primary election incident in which Buddy lost 245 votes from a single precinct, disenfranchising those unlucky voters.

That’s bad enough, but it now turns out that his office was well aware of the problem and covered it up, allowing incorrect vote totals to be certified by the state, thus nullifying any remedy.

Then, taking a cue from the handbook of W, Buddy waited until a Friday afternoon to notify the press of the problem. Oh, and he lied to the County Commission.

One Hillsborough County Commissioner calls these actions “malfeasance.” “Criminal” might be a better word. “Incompetence” is too kind.

On Sept. 3, one day after the Hillsborough County Canvassing Board met and certified the results of the primary election, Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson's staff made a startling discovery.

Their records seemed to show that 245 voters had cast ballots the elections office couldn't find.

Those 245 votes were significant. They had the potential to change the outcome of at least one race: In the Republican primary for the District 47 seat in the Florida House of Representatives, Bill Bunkley had lost to Kevin Ambler by just 130 votes.

Yet Johnson's staff told no one outside the elections office about the 245 vote discrepancy, according to an internal report obtained by the St. Petersburg Times that details the investigation into the lost votes.

Hillsborough elections officials notified neither the county attorney's office, the canvassing board, the state division of elections nor any primary candidates that 245 votes were unaccounted for. In fact, while the investigation into the missing votes dragged on for 13 days, the elections staff did not even tell Johnson about it.

Johnson, who was appointed elections chief last year when Pam Iorio quit to run for Tampa mayor, was not told of the discrepancy until Sept. 16, according to the internal report.

By then, the 10-day period for a candidate to challenge the result of the election had expired. That statutory clock began ticking after the canvassing board certified the election results as official. The challenge period ran out Sept. 13, three days before Johnson was even made aware of the problem.

"That's awful," Hillsborough County Commissioner Pat Frank said when told about the handling of the missing votes. "It's malfeasance.
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"It's really serious," Frank said. "And Buddy is responsible for what goes on."

Thursday, Johnson agreed he should have known about the problem. A three-term GOP legislator who is himself up for election against Democrat and computer programmer Rob MacKenna, Johnson said he had "a most unpleasant conversation" with his staff when he was finally told of the vote discrepancy.

"Do I wish my staff would have made me aware? In hindsight, yes," Johnson, 52, told the Times. "If I had known earlier, I would have acted sooner. ... I'm not clairvoyant."
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Johnson's chief of staff, Dan Nolan, oversaw the investigation.

Nolan, 50, is a former Army colonel with U.S. Central Command who joined the elections staff shortly after Johnson was appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush. He said Thursday that initially he was convinced that the 245-vote discrepancy was an administrative paperwork error that would be quickly resolved. In retrospect, he should have treated the problem with "a greater sense of urgency" and informed Johnson and others about it, Nolan said.

"I screwed this up," said Nolan, who signed on with Johnson for a limited tour of duty and expects to leave some time after the general election. "The responsibility is mine. There is no excuse."

According to his internal report, Nolan began his inquiry Sept. 3 when absentee manager Sharon Smith notified him that the office showed 26,935 certificates signed by early and absentee voters, but just 26,690 early and absentee votes cast - a difference of 245.
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Johnson first learned of the situation from Nolan on Sept. 16. That same day, Johnson composed and forwarded a letter to Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who oversees the state's Division of Elections.

Johnson wrote that the 245 votes were lost because of "human error by a veteran election staffer in setup and implementation" of an early voting machine. He also said it did not appear the votes could be counted in Hillsborough's final election results because they had been found after certification.

He was right. For purposes of official results, the votes made by 245 voters who went to the West Gate Library were wiped out.

Johnson waited 24 hours before notifying the media. In an e-mail to news outlets at about 4 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 17, Johnson said he was "extremely disappointed that this error has occurred." He emphasized that the lost votes did not change the outcome of any election and promised additional management safeguards.

Johnson provided no background about when his staff had begun looking into the discrepancy, and made no mention of being kept in the dark himself for 13 days while his staff hunted down the missing votes.

Three weeks after notifying the state of the lost votes, the County Commission called Johnson to account for the oversight that excluded the votes of 245 residents. Commissioner Kathy Castor, whose district includes the West Gate Library early voting site, asked Johnson to appear and provide assurances the episode would never be repeated.

Johnson gave those assurances and boasted of his office's handling of the problem.

"I'm proud of my staff," he told the commission on Oct. 6, according to a transcript. "I'm proud of myself in the immediate release of the information, and we did release all of this information immediately.

"This happened a month ago, and we have not withheld, we have not done anything to disguise this, this issue in the least. I'm very proud of that transparency."

Told Thursday of the office's internal report, Castor said, "That's different from the statements (Johnson) made at the County Commission."

Castor said it helped explain "the overwhelming resistance" she encountered in getting Johnson to provide a full accounting of the lost votes to commissioners.

"He sure did not want to appear before us," she said. "He practically begged not to come."