Brenda Snipes, the Broward County elections supervisor accused of bungling the recent midterm vote count, will receive an annual pension of $71,000 for her time in elected office.
Snipes, who resigned from her post earlier this month after Broward’s delayed vote count led to allegations of misconduct and corruption, will also continue to receive an annual $58,560 pension from her previous career as a public school teacher, the Sun-Sentinel reported.
Broward failed to submit a final vote count for days after polls closed and continued to error once a recount was ordered, losing 2,040 ballots and ultimately missing the state’s machine recount deadline by two minutes due to professed unfamiliarity with the Secretary of State website.
Broward elections officials also opened 205 provisional ballots before their validity was confirmed by a canvassing board and a Florida judge found that Snipes violated public records law by refusing to update the public as the votes were counted.
Florida governor Rick Scott, the Republican Senate candidate, accused Snipes and her colleagues of intentionally trying to modify the vote count to ensure Democratic victory, attributing nefarious motives to the numerous examples of incompetence.
Snipes earned an annual salary of $178,865 in her former post. She’s been reelected four times since she was appointed by former governor Jeb Bush in 2003, despite twice having been found guilty of violating Florida election law prior to the most recent election.
“It really raises the question, on top of everything else, why she’s being excessively compensated for doing a poor job. That’s the added insult to injury,” Dominic Calabro, president and CEO of Florida TaxWatch, told the Sun-Sentinel. “While she’s entitled to it, a lot of Floridians are resentful of it.”