WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Gov. Jeb Bush today ousted one of the most controversial public officials in Florida: Miriam Oliphant, supervisor of elections in Broward County, the state's most corrupt county and, not coincidentally, the state's most heavily Democrat county.
Oliphant, long under attack for her incompetence even from her fellow Democrats in Fort Lauderdale, did not comment after being served with an executive order removing her from office.
Bush named Brenda Calhoun Snipes, a former school superintendent in Broward, as her replacement.
In the Democrat primary in September 2002, voters received bad ballots and inaccurate registration information. Some polls opened late, and others closed early. Thousands of votes went uncounted for a week after the election.
Secretary of State Glenda Hood reported that Oliphant's office, "a very disjointed organization fraught with low morale and constant uncertainty," was poorly managed and unprepared to handle elections.
"Last Friday, three former employees filed a federal lawsuit against Oliphant, alleging she fired them last month because they helped expose mismanagement in her office. According to the suit, Oliphant tried to force employees to lie to prosecutors during the recent investigation of her office and threatened anyone who didn't do as told," the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reported today.
Broward County elections were infamous as a bastion of Democrat corruption even before Oliphant took office. As NewsMax reported exclusively in November 2000, observers in the presidential recount exposed repeated examples of blatant vote fraud.
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