It was probably supposed to be a softball question, Stetson elections law expert Ciara Torres-Spelliscy said.
When moderator Chris Wallace during the final debate asked GOP nominee Donald Trump if he was going to accept the results of the Nov. 8 election if his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, wins.
“Basically, do you believe in American Democracy?” she wrote in a piece that ran earlier this month on billmoyers.com.
She found the answer alarming.
“The fear he raises with his debate statement is that even if a court ruled against him that he might not concede, which would be unhealthy for our democracy,” Torres-Spelliscy said in an email.
It's different from the 2000 election fiasco, she said, because Al Gore stopped the recount after the U.S. Supreme Court intervened. And though he has waffled some, Trump has said he believes that if he doesn't win, the election will have been “rigged” in Clinton's favor.
Seeking to dispel some of the fears that voting machines won't be counting ballots the way they're actually cast, or some hacking entity will manipulate the results in favor of Clinton, Hillsborough County Commission Chair Les Miller said earlier this month he thought it would be a good idea to invite county elections supervisor Craig Latimer to the dais to explain how nobody's stealing any election.
So Latimer gave a 13-or-so-minute presentation to the board on all the ways in which it is not possible to rig or steal the election, let alone commit voter fraud.
“There's a tremendous amount of checks and balances that go into this,” he said. “I take the integrity of this election very seriously, and I want to assure you of that.”
Latimer said that the prospects of a stolen election or mass voter fraud are essentially impossible, given how election equipment is set up and how transparent the vote-counting process is.
He said all of Florida's 67 counties conduct random samples of their voting machines. In Hillsborough, that equipment that will be deployed to 14 sites countywide for early voting as well as 280 voting sites representing 340 precincts on Election Day. He said that equipment is on lockdown in his office until early voting and/or Election Day. And when it is deployed, it will be set up in large, open rooms where there's “plenty of visibility,” and not “able to be tampered with in any fashion."
After the election, his office's canvassing board will then randomly select a race and precincts and staff will hand count those ballots to ensure the accuracy of the machine count.
And the machines, by the way, are not connected to the internet. And neither is another key piece of equipment.
"The server that houses the election software is not connected to the internet," he said. "Let me repeat that. My server that houses all of our election management software is not connected to the internet or my intranet. By law, it is a standalone server. It's under 24-7 video surveillance.”
There will also be two copies of the results for each polling place, he said, one sent to his office and one that is literally posted on the front door of said polling place.
Trump has said Clinton's crew may have other tricks up its sleeve on Nov. 8, namely voter fraud. Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani told Trump supporters that "dead people" tend to vote for Democrats.
Latimer said there are multiple safeguards against voter fraud, including "dead" people voting.
Commissioner Sandy Murman said a recently widowed constituent told her she received a ballot for her deceased husband.
Latimer told her that while some voters slip through the cracks, the state Division of Elections nightly checks its voter rolls against death records — and newly listed felons.
“I can tell you that the Division of Elections nightly scrubs its voter rolls against the Department of Health's deceased files as well as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for people that have been adjudicated guilty of felonies," Latimer said.
And even if someone were to get ahold of the ballot of a deceased person, Latimer said, that person would have to replicate the dead voter's signature, and if it's not an exact match or there's no signature, that ballot is not counted.
“That voter would have had to sign that ballot and the signature on that ballot would have had to match the signature that we have on file to be accepted," he said. "Or that voter would have had to come in with a photo signature identification and present themselves.”
Despite Latimer's assurances that the process is safe and transparent, it's likely many skeptics won't buy that the process is safe and not "rigged." Latimer is one of 67 elections supervisors in the state, and each county elects theirs. Latimer happens to be a Democrat, but many other counties have elected Republicans to oversee their elections.
Miller said a bigger concern of his was citizen's access to voting. Many prospective voters to not have a state-issued ID. Others aren't able to get to polling places or early voting sites. And many are felons, who, despite having served their former sentences, have not had their voting rights restored.
Such policies are in place in states like Florida ostensibly to minimize voter fraud, which critics — mostly Democrats — say there's no evidence that it's a problem.
"As I’ve written over and over, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than impersonate another voter at the polls,” wrote The Nation's Ari Berman Oct. 20.
After Latimer's presentation, Commissioner Kevin Beckner, a Democrat, poked fun at one of the more outlandish rigged-election theories, that Russian hackers will manipulate polling place data.
“I looked at your last name, I did some research, and it doesn't look like there's any Russian connection to your name, either,” he said, which Latimer confirmed.
