BRADENTON — On Tuesday, the Manatee County Canvassing Board convened at the Supervisor of Elections Office to conduct its required Logic and Accuracy testing. During the L and A session, vote tabulating equipment is tested to prove that the machines are programmed to read ballots and count votes accurately.
During the session, former Deputy Supervisor and Chief of Staff Scott Farrington brought it to the board's attention that audit machines recently purchased by interim Supervisor of Elections James Satcher may not have been subject to procedures required by a Division of Elections administrative rule and would therefore be ineligible for use during the primary.
Farrington said that he was unsure whether the procedures had been followed or whether the auditing board was aware of the rule. It turned out the procedures had not been followed by Satcher and his team.
The three-member canvassing board—comprised of County Court Judge Melissa Gould, MSO General Counsel Eric Werbeck, and Bradenton City Councilwoman Lisa Gonzalez Moore—voted unanimously that the machines could not be used for the August primary.
Farrington, who spent a decade as a top election official in Sarasota County before spending 11 years as Former SOE Mike Bennett's top official, is challenging Satcher for Supervisor of Elections in the Republican primary, which will decide the seat.
Satcher was appointed to the seat by Gov. Ron DeSantis when Bennett retired, despite Bennett, who is also a Republican, strongly advising in his resignation letter that Farrington get the post. Satcher, who was serving his first term as Manatee County Commissioner for District 1 at the time, had no experience conducting elections, having not even served on the canvassing board prior to the appointment.
Almost immediately upon being installed, Satcher appeared before his former board to ask for nearly a million dollars in additional funding for the current budget despite the fact that only months remained in the fiscal year. One of the purchases from those funds was the audit machines, which cost upward of a quarter million dollars.
Satcher has drawn extensive criticism for failing to behave in a non-partisan manner as interim SOE. There are no other candidates on the ballot in the race aside from him and Farrington, which meant it should have been an open primary, appearing on all voters' ballots. However, the write-in loophole was utilized, which means that only registered Republicans will have a say in who gets to be SOE. Many Manatee County voters have changed their registration in order to have a vote in the race. Satcher has referred to their actions as efforts to "rig" the election.
Satcher recently wasted another hundred thousand dollars sending every voter in the county a new voter identification card. Because the data used in the mailing was collected before the deadline to switch party affiliation, many voters received new cards with incorrect party affiliation just weeks after receiving a new card correctly reflecting the change.
This led to broad confusion as to whether they could vote in the primary, which Satcher said was "on them" for trying to "rig" the election. Satcher also received criticism for including a letter that read more like a campaign piece than a legitimate communication to voters. Most recently, an SOE employee wrote an open letter alleging even more troubling behavior by Satcher since he took over as Supervisor of Elections.
Click here to watch a recent debate between Satcher and Farrington.
