A Florida newspaper is warning that an “election conspiracy theorist” is vying to take control of elections in an area that includes former President Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago Club residence.
Republican Jeff Buongiorno is hoping to unseat Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link in November. Link was appointed to the role by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in January 2019 as a Republican but became a Democrat after taking office.
Buongiorno recently filed a lawsuit over what he claims is “a conspiracy to influence the upcoming elections by registering non-citizens and synthetic identities as voters,” naming Link, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other federal and state officials as defendants.
In an opinion article published on Thursday, the editorial board of the South Florida Sun Sentinel warned that Buongiorno “subscribes to the fantasy that millions of immigrants are surging into the country illegally to vote [Vice President] Kamala Harris into the Oval Office.
“There was a time when such conspiracy-wielding candidates were laughed off as unelectable. No more. After all, millions of Floridians will cast ballots for the biggest election conspiracy theorist of them all in November.
“In 2020, there was just one election conspiracy. Now there are dozens, and across the state, election conspiracy theorists like Buongiorno are on the ballot or jostling to influence whose vote counts.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Buongiorno campaign via email on Thursday.
Buongiorno’s lawsuit speculates that “millions of illegal border crossers” have or will be registered to vote in November’s election. Trump and some supporters have made similar claims about past federal elections, with investigations revealing that an infinitesimally small portion of ballots cast, far fewer than needed to sway results, were actually from noncitizens.
Complaints in the suit include “the Palm Beach County DMV registering Spanish-speaking people to vote without asking for proof of citizenship.” Proof is not required for anyone registering to vote under federal law, with those registering instead being required to swear that they are citizens under penalty of perjury.
States also have processes to weed out any noncitizens attempting to register. A 2022 audit of Georgia’s voter rolls found that 1,634 people who were not citizens attempted to register but were all unsuccessful because they were caught by election officials, according to the Associated Press.
The Sun Sentinel’s editorial board argued that Floridians cannot “shrug off” Buongiorno’s suit because the case has been assigned to Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, best known for dismissing the former president’s federal documents case last month after making a series of rulings that were criticized for allegedly being biased in his favor.
“Buongiorno is just one of several conspiracy-minded supervisor of election candidates who hope to oversee Florida votes,” the board wrote. “There really is an election fraud being perpetrated in Florida, one that voters need to pay attention to: It’s the clickbait fiction that the machinery of democracy is hopelessly rigged and is fixable only by limiting access to the ballot box.”
