For the first time since last summer’s primary election season, a Flagler County Canvassing Board meeting was held at the Supervisor of Elections’ office and was remarkable for only one thing: it was not newsworthy.
The 90-minute meeting Monday, the first of several canvassing board meetings in light of the special primary election for Florida House and Senate on Jan. 23, featured no accusations, no complaints, no stealth recordings, no surfeit of attorneys, not even a court reporter, as had become the norm under the old regime last fall. The board members went about the business of checking ballot-counting equipment. They were done at 11:30 a.m. They adjourned, and that was that.
The difference today: it was the first post-Kimberle Weeks era meeting. Weeks resigned unexpectedly last week. On Friday, Gov. Rick Scott named Weeks’s long-time aide and deputy, Kaiti Lenhart, interim supervisor of elections. And Monday Lenhart sat where Weeks previously sat in canvassing board meetings, flanked by County Judge Melissa Moore-Stens, who chairs the board, and Nate McLaughlin, the county commissioner named to serve on the board this year.
The atmosphere in the supervisor’s office was radically different from previous such meetings. Supervisor staff, while always accommodating previously, was relaxed, light-hearted and welcoming, smiles were everywhere, and the only task was the job of checking equipment. Citrus County’s Maureen Baird, the operations manager at that county’s supervisor of elections office, lent a hand throughout.
Aside from the obvious absence of Weeks, there were minor, subtle changes: her image has vanished from the home page of the supervisor’s website, but her copious newsletters and their accompanying speeches have not. And her glamour-shot image has appeared, framed and as part of a collection of the last several decades of supervisor of elections, at the entrance to the office, to the left as patrons walk in, replacing a wall previously dedicated to individuals who’d served in the armed forces. That collection has moved to the opposite wall.
Today’s meeting was the first of six scheduled before, during and after the primary election. Such meetings are usually uneventful and routine. They had not been so during Weeks’s tenure as many of the conflicts that shadowed the previous supervisor’s tenure were fueled by issues she would raise during the meetings, often objecting to the presence of County Attorney Al Hadeed or to the service of whoever the county commission had named to the board. Today, Hadeed sat through much of the meeting (at least as it unfolded in the conference room), without issues. Weeks had hired her own attorney, who would sit through many of last year’s meetings. Lenhart, who was focused on today’s tasks, had neither extra attorney nor any other extra contractors, relying on her staff and Baird.
There were perhaps two or three visitors in attendance (canvassing board meetings are public). Lenhart said she’d expected a larger turnout, but that had been a hallmark of Weeks meetings, where routine had turned to spectacle. Today’s indications are that canvassing board meetings appear to have returned to their unremarkable quality, to the relief of many.
Will (#1) says
Mirabile dictu !
orphan says
I’m just so relieved.
There never was a need for what has happened over the past year!
Why don’t we now stand behind Ms Lenhart and proceed to address issues pertinent to Flagler County government?
How about the nasty condition of the roads out in the western areas of the county?
Can we not let the elections office just go and do their thing now?
Is it just possible that the county can now focus on priorities?
Good riddance to rubbish! (look it up) :)
confidential says
Do I see the blond head on the canvassing board meeting… is that kmedley the PC city’s favorite? God help us on the incoming elections manipulation.
NortonSmitty says
All she does is plug the Electronic Voting Machines into the wall. The real fraud happens when Diebold and the other Republican controlled corporations, including Scytel Corp. out of Spain who for some reason has been hired to count all our votes for the last decade geet to tell us the results. They are owned by Neoconservative aligned companies led by both NeoCon Americans and foreign interests.
Here is testimony given under oath to Congress by a programmer hired by Tom Feeney, Republican Florida State Senator and later Congressman. Seeing as how it has been available in the Public Domain since 2009, it’s just amazing how you never have heard a word about it on all of our supposedly Patriotic 24/7 News organizations, ain’t it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YcxGGnmRQAs
I’ll say it again, from the all-time expert on the subject:
It is enough that the people know there was an election.
The people who cast the votes decide nothing.
The people who count the votes decide everything.
Joseph Stalin
But you hear constantly how one or two cases of false-ID voters in the entire country means we have to keep hundreds of thousands of poor, elderly and college age voters from the polls to protect us all, don’t you.
Wake up people.
Fred says
Well that was boring….. an Kimmy come back and play once in awhile just to add some comic relief to an important but boring task?
Ashamed to say I live in Flagler County says
I see Lenhart seats herself as Weeks did at the head if the table…where’s all the fuss-Flaglerlive made issues when Weeks did so. Weeks was the best Flagler county ever had. Look at what she exposed. Its too bad she resigned. Flagler County Commissioners should be ashamed.
Fred says
Smitty can you back up this BS with some links to facts. Just how does requiring someone to show photo ID keep someone from the polls? These poor need ID to get aid, These elderly have some sort of ID to get SSN, and college age voters if they are trying to get a job have some ID. Get off your soap box. Instead of waking up you should just go back to bed. You are not fooling anyone but yourself.