Progressive Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott has recently been caught on camera appearing to take sides in the contentious special congressional election in Florida’s 20th District by asking Republican congressional nominee Jason Mariner if he was a member of the Proud Boys and if he had “thrown up” hand signs that could be portrayed as racist.
In two video clips obtained by The Floridian, Scott can be seen on camera questioning Mariner and several of his supporters, including to African-American women.
“Are you guys anyway affiliated with Proud Boys at all? So there was no hand sign?
Were you guys throwing up the ‘All Ok sign,” asked Scott.
“Were you guys saying, “everything is OK?”
Scott then added, “I’m not trying to insult you,” which prompted Mariner to state, ”That is an insulting question.”
The accusation that Mariner used perceived racist sign language on the street was made by his Democratic congressional opponent, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormack, but Mariner alleges says that “she’s going to make sure I die.”
There has been no word if Scott has asked Cherfilus-McCormack if he threatened Mariner.
Mariner says he has denounced the controversial and perceived racist Proud Boys.
Scott is also seen telling Mariner that those driving up to vote at that voting location, and who lived in the area, were most likely going to vote for Cherfilus-McCormack.
This is not the first time Scott has made headlines.
In May 2021, Scott confirmed to a group of Democrats in West Park, Florida, that ballot harvesting was occurring in Broward County and in other counties across the state of Florida.
The Floridian was the only media outlet to report on this.
“I feel like what SB 90 did was, SB-90 made a lot these things more difficult, whereas communities would get together and work together to go around and collect everybody's ballots, SD90 made so that in some cases you could be you could potentially be breaking the law by doing that," said Scott.
Mariner and Cherfilus-McCormack will face off Tuesday, January 11th in the special election to replace the late Rep. Alcee Hastings, who died last year of Pancreatic cancer.
In addition, the ballot Scott and his administration sent out to Democratic voters in Broward is flawed.
Here is the ballot Scott sent out. There is an obvious printing error that was made. The election is a general special election, not a primary election.
