Polk County elections supervisor: Some records requests can't be fulfilled

Separately from the other records requests, Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards office has fielded inquiries from members of Polk County Citizens Defending Freedom-USA, a conservative political group that formed last year and has since spawned chapters in other Florida counties and in Texas.

Liz Suits, who identified herself as a research and analysis division leader for CCDF, emailed the Polk elections office on Aug. 26 to request information from the 2020 general election and all subsequent elections. Suits made detailed requests for such materials as a text-based report listing every ballot, with its sequential identification, timestamp and method of voting, along with the specific votes for all races, batch ID and tabulator ID — a report often called a “cast vote record.”

Edwards said her office did not create such a record, which is not required by Florida law. She said it isn’t possible to generate one after the election.

“There are different processes in different counties,” she said. “Some of them have it, and some of them don't.”

Suits also asked for a ballot manifest report, a catalog of all the physical paper ballots and their locations in sequence. Edwards said such reports are associated with Dominion Voting Systems and not ES&S, the company whose election software her office uses.

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Writing that the information would be used “educational” rather than commercial purposes, Suits asked that any fees for producing the material be waived.

“I forgot to add that this is a time-sensitive matter,” Suits wrote. “I am requesting that this be fulfilled by September 1st, 2022” — four business days later.

Suits did not respond to an email from The Ledger asking why she had requested the material.

Another recent request to the Polk elections office came from Ro Grosman of Defend Our Union, seeking voter registration transaction information for more than 34,000 voters. In response, Edwards said her office would have to look up each voter individually, redact information that is not public record and then save the information for each voter.

The elections office determined that the task would require 5,704 hours of staff time. The office charges $15 per hour to fulfill records requests that take more than 30 minutes.

Edwards said that Sarah Calamunci, CCDF’s Election Integrity Division Leader, asked that she talk with Grosman, saying he could explain how to extract the information more efficiently. Edwards said that in a phone conversation Grosman offered to write a script to do the task and inquired about access to voter record audit log data.

Edwards said under the contract with the vendor, VR Systems, her office is not allowed to provide third-party access to voter data through its products.

“In addition, there is no current mechanism to extract the data from the audit tables that isolates the data from the VRS,” Edwards said in an email.

Weeks later, Edwards said, the director of the Florida Division of Elections called her to ask about the response to Grosman’s request. Edwards said she explained the details of the contract with VR Systems.

On its website, Defend Our Union says it is patterned after Defend Florida, an unincorporated group that has conducted controversial “community canvassing” operations that purportedly found irregularities on 38% of mail ballots examined from the 2020 election.

Calamunci also emailed Edwards on April 26, asking about the limit for cash contributions to local candidates and what the consequences would be for a violation. Edwards relayed an answer from the late Barbara Osthoff, Assistant Supervisor of Elections, saying a candidate could refund the excess amount, keep documentation and send a letter explaining the error.

But Osthoff added: "A complaint could be made with the Florida Elections Committee, and then it would be up to the committee."

Rick Nolte, who defeated incumbent Sarah Fortney in a Polk County School Board race, reporting of a $5,200 cash loan to his campaign on March 10, an apparent violation of state campaign laws. Billy Townsend, a Lakeland resident and former School Board member, has filed complaints against Nolte for that loan and for 10 cash contributions in August of $100 each. The maximum allowed for cash donations is $50.

Asked by email if she had inquired about contribution limits on Nolte's behalf, Calamunci replied: "Three school board candidates exceeded the cash contribution limit. I didn’t work any candidate’s campaign."

A subsequent search of School Board candidates' financial reports found that Fortney listed a cash contribution of $100 on May 5 from Marianne Capoziello, former president of the Polk Education Association.

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

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Florida elections supervisor: Some records requests can't be fulfilled