'I do not think it was legitimate:' New Polk GOP leader backs 2020 election-fraud claims

A relative newcomer to local politics is now leading the Republican Party of Polk County.

Members voted Jan. 15 to elect Jim Powers of Lakeland as chair of the party’s Executive Committee. Jim Guth, who gained election last year, resigned about two months ago because of health factors, he told The Ledger.

Al Goldstein of Lake Wales, the first vice chairman, served as interim chair following Guth’s resignation. Party leaders organized an election the night of Jan. 15 to choose a permanent chair.

Goldstein, a former Lake Wales city commissioner, said that the first ballot resulted in a tie between him and Powers, with 42 votes each. On the second ballot, Powers achieved a narrow victory.

Powers, 63, is an information technology professional who only became involved with the local party following the 2020 presidential election. He became chair of the party’s election integrity committee, focusing on perceived vulnerabilities in state and national election systems.

Powers, married and the father of three adults, said he has lived in Lakeland since 2001. He grew up in La Grange, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

Republicans lead Democrats by more than 41,000 in voter registrations in Polk County. Democrats held the advantage as recently as 2017. Powers suggested that he is not satisfied with the current Republican margin.

“I want to grow our party in Polk,” he said. “I’d like to expand it significantly. I’d like to expand our registration, our turnouts. Believe me, I'm an older person myself, so I respect the older voters, I'm in their group. But I think there's a great opportunity to expand our base among younger voters, and among our Hispanic and Black Americans who live in Polk County.”

J.C. Martin held the county party’s top position from 2016 until last year, when Guth gained election. Guth, a Poinciana resident, had served as party chair immediately before Martin.

'Tipping point'

Powers called the 2020 election a “tipping point” that prompted him to become involved with the local Republican Party. He said he became chair of the election integrity committee last year.

Powers made it clear that he will focus largely on election security. He said that he became concerned while watching news coverage of the 2020 presidential election and it appeared that elections officials in five swing states had ceased counting ballots.

“I was horrified,” Powers said. “I’m a career IT person, and I knew something was not right. So I decided I have to get off the couch and do something. And so it was election integrity that was the primary motivator to get me involved after the 2020 election.”

Former President Donald Trump has claimed that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen. A range of courts rejected virtually all of his complaints about the election, and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency declared that the election was “the most secure in American history.”

Election '24: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ends presidential campaign, endorses Trump

Trump’s own former attorney general, William Barr, has stated that Trump’s claims of election fraud were false. Two of Trump’s former lawyers pleaded guilty to election interference in Georgia. One of them, Sidney Powell, said that “no reasonable person” would regard her fraud claims as factual.

But Trump, now campaigning for a return to the White House, continues to insist that he won the 2020 election, without providing detailed evidence to support the claim. Polls show that a large majority of Republicans do not believe that President Joe Biden legitimately won the election.

Powers left no doubt that he also questions the outcome of the 2020 election.

“I do not think it was legitimate, and I've spent three years studying it,” he said “I've taken lots of deep dives. I've read many books. I've contacted election integrity experts in the state. I've listened to countless hours of podcasts, and I'm a technology person myself, so I can understand the reasonings behind people saying these things.”

Powers pointed to thousands of affidavits signed by citizens who claimed they had witnessed fraud. He cited the book “A Parallel Election,” by Gregory Stenstrom and Leah Hoopes, saying it proved that election officials broke “every single law imaginable” to alter the results for Biden.

He also cited the reporting of Jim Hoft on Gateway Pundit, a conservative political site. Two election workers in Georgia have sued the site for defamation over Hoft’s claims that they engaged in election fraud.

A return to paper ballots, counted by hand?

In focusing on perceived weaknesses in election processes, Powers favors conducting elections with hand counts of paper ballots, rather than the electronic tabulation machines now used in Polk County and throughout Florida. He said that members of the Polk County Republican Executive Committee are almost unanimous in supporting the idea.

Powers and other local Republicans pressed the issue at a public forum with the Polk County legislative delegation in October. He said he supports a proposed bill (HB 359) that would give county elections officers the option of counting ballots by hand at the precinct level.

Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, has sponsored a Senate companion bill. So far, none of Polk County’s legislators are co-sponsors of either bill.

“I know it's an issue that we need to try to gain more traction on, but I think it's an important one,” Powers said. “And this was my primary driver in getting involved more deeply with the Republican Party.”

Slander laws: Florida bill makes it easier to sue if accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia

Mark Earley, supervisor of elections for Leon County, told The Ledger in October that hand counts are slower and costlier than machine counts. He said multiple studies have found hand counts to be less accurate.

Powers, again drawing upon his IT experience, said he has no doubt that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to manipulation — either by hackers or by someone with nefarious intentions programming code into it. He said the testing of software in electronic voting machines is inadequate.

Elections supervisors have said that the tabulation devices do not connect to the internet and therefore cannot be hacked.

'It's not the only issue'

Powers said he realizes that as party chair he cannot direct his attention only to concerns about election processes.

“I know it's not the only issue,” he said. “This is what was my initial motivator, but I know as the chairman of the REC, there are many other issues we need to focus on, and I will. Again, my job as the chairman of the REC is to try to help qualified Republicans get elected. I mean, it’s as simple as that. I intend to do that.”

When Powers assumed his position, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was running for president, competing against Trump, also a Florida resident, in the Republican primaries. Powers emphasized that as chair of the local party he must remain neutral in any Republican primary election. But on Sunday, DeSantis bowed out of the race and endorsed Trump.

Republicans have utterly dominated elections in Polk County for most of this century. No Democrat residing in Polk has been elected to a partisan county or state position in more than a decade.

As of Friday, no Democrat had filed to run in multiple county and legislative races.

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: New Polk GOP leader will focus on election security, growing the party