The highest election official in Broward County is facing calls for his removal. Who is the target of GOP Brenda Snipes?

Snipes spent most of her career as a teacher and public school principal and was appointed to the Elections Branch only after the resignation of her former incumbent following the disastrous 2000 presidential election.

African-American and Democrat, Snipes was named to clean up the county's electoral system in 2003 by a Republican, former Gov. Jeb Bush, who was sensitive to the policy of eliminating his black Democratic predecessor in the strongly democrat county.

Snipes has been re-elected four times, the last of which in 2016, still by wide margins.

Bush has now joined the other Republicans to demand the sacking of Snipes, say on Twitter that she "has not respected Florida law in many ways, undermining Floridian confidence in our electoral process".

Bush is far from being the only one to criticize and this does not only come from Republicans. The Florida media has uncovered many issues related to the election administration over many years and the editorial board of Sun Sentinel, Broward County's largest newspaper, has asked him to resign.

Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Told Politico that Broward County was "not only the most troubled election office of the state, but also the most troubled election office from the country".

Even some Democrats here in private say that, while admiring Snipes' decades of dedication to his community, his skill in the tedious work of the election administration leaves something to be desired. A Democrat even bumped into her at a 2016 primary, citing previous numbers from his office, but he lost a lot.

Earlier this year, a judge ruled that the Snipes office had broken the law by not keeping the ballots as long as they were needed as a result of the 2016 election.

That year, his office left a referendum vote on marijuana for medical purposes. And before that, he accidentally published the results of the presidential primary before the polls closed – a no no because the first returns that become public can influence voters who have not yet voted. And in 2012, nearly 1,000 non-counted ballots were discovered one week after the election.

"Unfortunately, this is not the first time that this has happened at Broward," said Ilene Lieberman, Broward County Commissioner.

At this year's count, Snipes was criticized for failing to provide updated information on the number of unsubmissed ballots and for processing 22 canceled ballots that were accidentally mixed with valid ballots. .

Snipes denied any wrongdoing and said that she and her staff were doing their best given the large number of ballots – about 714,000 – that the large county must deal with. "We ran 22 sites, 14 days and 12 hours, and we had a big vote by mail, so do not try to change it to make it look like I'm doing comedy." ", she told reporters.

But especially for the recount, a badly designed ballot put the Snipes office at the center of the controversy.

Outgoing Democratic Senator Bill Nelson's only hope of making up for his deficit of about 12,500 votes behind incumbent Governor Rick Scott in the Senate could be based on this ballot, a hope the Democrats have misinterpreted by their machines on election night.

Add to that the fact that Broward is one of the most populous and democratic counties in Florida, and it's easy to understand why Republicans pay so much attention to Snipes.

Yet their most explosive claims against it have failed. For example, empty cards containing ballots not counted on certain social networks were found to contain only supplies such as notepads and "Vote Here" signs.

A Broward County judge reiterated on Monday that he had seen no evidence of electoral fraud, as claimed by Trump and other people, asking lawyers to submit some evidence before to continue their rhetoric about it.

And Snipes has a lot of defenders, as evidenced by his easy victories.

"She is a woman of integrity, and I am sure that is why Jeb Bush named her," said Grace Carrington, a member of the National Committee of the Committee of Democrats who knows her. "It's a Republican, so he did not trust her, I do not think he would have done it."