Updated 4/24/24 at 3:45 PM regarding the number of public speakers who supported some or all of the Resolution.
The Board of County Commissioners agreed not to adopt or even vote on the proposed “Resolution for a Legally Valid 2024 General Election” I wrote about in Sunday’s post.
Download the Resolution here.
Below is some of what happened during the nearly two hours of discussion.
Introducing the Resolution
Early in the meeting, County Manager Amy Patterson announced an “update” to the agenda. She said the proposed Resolution was from United Sovereign Americans and not from the Election Integrity Committee of the Collier County Republican Executive Committee, as previously stated in the Executive Summary published online.
Discussion of the Resolution (Agenda Item 10A) began around 10 AM. Watch the video recording here.
Commissioner Hall began by saying that he had received “999,000 emails” and that “a lot of them are misinformation.”
While “we have great elections in Florida and Collier County,” he said, he brought the resolution forward “so that we can begin a grassroots effort that goes to every county in Florida.”
Pam Bolger and Myra Jenkins then addressed the Board from the podium.
Bolger, an eight-year resident of Collier County, said she was a volunteer with United Sovereign Americans, an organization “literally with thousands of active volunteers in more than 20 states.”
“Today, I come to you as a concerned citizen, sharing alarming information about our state voter database, uncovered through thousands of hours of research conducted by highly qualified and credentialed data experts,” she said. “While the numbers are staggering, they just don’t add up.”
Jenkins, another volunteer with the organization, then read the Resolution.
Comments from the public
Next, fourteen members of the public spoke. Twelve of the speakers opposed the Resolution and were highly complimentary of Collier County’s Elections Office, Supervisor of Elections Melissa Blazier, and her staff.
In addition to Bolger and Jenkins, Dave Schaffel (speaking at 1:32 on the meeting recording) wholly supported the resolution. Since he was given time by four other speakers, he represented a total of five speakers. Tim Guerrette (speaking at 1:59 on the recording) supported improving the election processes. Both Schaffel and Guerrette are running to unseat Blazier as Supervisor of Elections in the August elections.
Supervisor of Elections Blazier was the last to speak. She called in from out of town and repeated the comments she made in her April 18 email about the Resolution to Hall.
The commissioners’ discussion
Following public comments, Hall said (beginning around 2:11 in the recording) that his intent in bringing the Resolution had been completely misunderstood. “I would agree with every single one of you wholeheartedly if this was directed at our local elections,” he said. “But it’s not.”
“We know that some of these things [in the Resolution] are not state law,” he continued. “It’s the message that we want to send the legislators to get to be state law. We want fair, accurate, accountable elections. We want the fire to begin here.”
“I’ll never forget how I felt the night of the 2020 election,” he said, explaining why he felt so strongly about the need for election reform. “It was worse than I felt on 9/11. There was something just deeply, deeply wrong with [the election result]. There’s nothing that was fair about that election when the results didn’t even show up. And they’ve been manipulated.
“I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole,” he said before allowing the other commissioners to make their comments. “But there’s a rabbit hole to go down.”
Then, the other four commissioners spoke. Each had strong reservations about the Resolution as drafted and expressed their unequivocal belief that Collier County’s and Florida’s election results were accurate.
Commissioner Burt Saunders said he was not willing to vote on, table, or even continue the Resolution to another meeting.
“I think trying to take this document and fix it is going to drive you crazy,” he said. “If you’ve got a mission, which is to fix election laws in Florida, let’s do a resolution that deals with election laws in Florida.”
Ultimately, the other four commissioners agreed.
Each said he was open to meeting with any member of the public who wanted to discuss the matter further. Due to Sunshine Law prohibitions about commissioners speaking with each other outside a public meeting, they were asked to communicate their thoughts individually to County Manager Amy Patterson. Presumably, she would then draft something to come forward at a later date.
Learn more
While there was no report about the meeting in our local newspaper as of the time of this post, here is the coverage I did find online:
- Collier County’s proposed election changes stir heated debate over voter fraud claims, by Ryan Arbogast, NBC2, 4/23/24
- Collier County commissioners let election resolution die, by David Silverberg, The Paradise Progressive, 4/23/24
- Chris Hall: 2020 Biden victory ‘was worse than I felt on 9/11;’ was ‘deeply wrong,’ ‘manipulated’, by David Silverberg, The Paradise Progressive, 4/24/24