SOE Wendy Link Highlights Abacoa Meeting
Posted by Fred Scheibl on April 2, 2019 · Leave a Comment
Appointed by Governor DeSantis to replace former SOE Susan Bucher who he removed from office after the embarrassing spectacle that was the 2018 election in PBC, Wendy Sartory Link is a breath of fresh air.
Having never held elective office, nor planning to run for the job permanently, Wendy comes from a successful career in business and civic leadership, and is interested in solving problems. And problems are what she faces at the SOE.
In her 6 year tenure, Susan Bucher so politicized the office, that Democrat poll workers in south county have quit en masse, telling Wendy that they are “loyal to Susan Bucher, not you.” Unfortunately, many of the remaining management in the organization may also be loyal to her predecessor, a real impediment to change. The morale in the organization was poor when Wendy took over, and staff did not trust each other and in some cases felt that advantage could only come at others expense. After the 2018 recount circus, the reputation of the organization is on a par with the days of the butterfly ballot, and Wendy has inherited outdated and failing equipment, a voter registration system incompatible with the rest of the state and dependent on a single questionable vendor, and a mandate to roll out new technology in time for the Presidential Primary in March 2020.
In her short time in office, Wendy has successfully lobbied the county for more money for the equipment rollout, started the move to a new registration system, and completed a successful March Municipal election with a suspect staff and essentially no experience of her own in running elections. A very good start indeed.
Unfortunately, the demographics of the county being what they are, the 2020 election will likely bring us back a Susan Bucher clone (if not Susan herself). We can only hope that Wendy can transform the office sufficiently in 2 years to not only run a fair and open 2020 election, but implement the processes, procedures and staffing to keep it professional and impartial for many years to come in spite of what her successor brings to the job.
Part of insuring open and fair elections is the makeup of the pollworker workforce. About 1000 new workers are needed for next year, so if you ever thought about working the polls, now is the time to step up. You can apply for the job at the SOE website
The second speaker of the evening was pundit Loren Spivack. Using his quirky humor to good effect, he attacked Progressives on the fault lines of their inconsistencies.
Why do they oppose a border wall, he asks. With their unshakeable faith in the death and destruction being caused by carbon emissions, why would you want to import people from third world countries where their carbon footprint is tiny, to an industrial country where they would spew carbon prodigously? Why it could even shorten the 12 year outlook to the end of days!
He deftly explained how socialism is about control, not ideology, and pointed out the the only war in which we have engaged that had no anti-war movement was World War II. The reason? We were on the same side as Stalin, one of their “good guys”.
He also touched on how Sweden has moved from a bulwark of feminism to a society where rapes are many and increasing. When surveys suggest that it is the recent immigrant population from cultures where respect for women is lacking, their response was to stop doing the surveys. (Note – that may be changing. See: “Sweden to Release First Report on Migration and Crime since 2005”.)
Other examples include Progressives support for trans-genders competing in women’s sports (throwing women under the bus) and their recent support for anti-semitism (eg Ilhan Omar), doing the same to Jews.
Perhaps his best line of the night sums up socialism nicely: “Many mice die in mouse traps because they don’t understand why the cheese is free.”
Loren is the author of several humorous books on the subject, including “The Wizard of Iz“, “The New Democrat“, and “The Gorax“.
