Still, Collier County has ‘a superb system’ for elections
Collier County Commissioner Chris Hall at the moment he discussed 9/11. (Image: CCBC)
April 24, 2024 by David Silverberg
During discussion of his election-disrupting resolution during the Collier County Board of Commissioners meeting yesterday, April 23, Commissioner Chris Hall (R-District 2) said that the election of President Joe Biden in 2020 hit him harder than the terrorist-piloted planes that smashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I’ll never forget how I felt the night of the 2020 election,” said Hall. “It was worse than I felt on 9/11.”
He continued: “There was something just deeply wrong with that and I know several in here in the room was ecstatic about that. But there was nothing that was fair about that election, when the results didn’t even show up and had been manipulated.”
He then declined to continue on the subject or offer evidence. “You know, I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole but there’s a rabbit hole to go down,” he said.
Hall’s comparison of the 2020 election results to 9/11 brought a rare rebuke from fellow Commissioner Rick LoCastro (R-District 1) when it was his turn to speak. LoCastro is a retired US Air Force colonel and Air Force Academy graduate.
“First I want to say something to you, Chairman Hall, and I mean this with no disrespect,” he said, somberly. “I was unhappy in 2020 but I got to tell you, as a veteran, I could never say it was worse than 9/11. I lost so many people on 9/11 and afterwards and so…. I understand how you package the meaning you were trying to say and so I realize you’re not being disrespectful, you’re a huge supporter of veterans but I just want to go on the record to all the veterans that are here: 9/11 was horrific, OK?
“Nobody died in 2020. I lost hundreds of friends, I held dead people in my arms, I put American flags over caskets, I put them on airplanes after 9/11 and after, so I don’t ask you to rescind those comments and I say this with all due respect so I’m not…I hope you’re hearing this in a positive [way].”
Referring to Commissioner Burt Saunders (R-District 3), LoCastro continued: “So I think, as Commissioner Saunders said, sometimes words matter and we speak up here very quickly about domestic animal services and other things and Conservation Collier, but I just wanted to go on the record and say 9/11 was horrific and I don’t think there’s many things that I hope will [ever] top that.”
Commissioner Rick LoCastro. (Image: CCBC)
‘A superb system’
Hall’s support for overturning the 2020 election led him to introduce a resolution written by the organization United Sovereign Americans that alleged massive voting fraud in Florida during the 2022 election and demanded 11 major changes to voting procedures.
That resolution had no support from fellow commissioners, who declined to advance it, effectively killing it.
A number of public speakers at yesterday’s meeting, including Supervisor of Elections Melissa Blazier, pointed out that invalidating the 2022 election would have invalidated Hall’s own election, since that was when he won office.
But Hall was at pains to argue that his resolution did not target Collier County and he praised Blazier and the work of her office.
“One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is sit here for 45 minutes and hear this applied to things it doesn’t even apply to,” he said impatiently when the public comment period was over. “We are not talking about our local supervisor of elections. We’re not talking about Collier County, in no way. If I was ever illegally elected I would resign in three seconds.”
In Collier County, he said, “We have a superb system and I have utmost confidence that we were all elected fairly.”
The resolution was aimed at being part of a national movement to alter voting procedures, he said. “…I just want to make it very, very clear this resolution has nothing to do with our local supervisor of elections, our local integrity. It has to do with the people that’s—it’s a grassroots effort, it’s a movement to begin here and go with every county in Florida to send to our state legislators and our state Senate to let them know how important, fair, accurate and accountable elections are. That’s all it is.”
As he put it: “We want the fire to begin here.”
Commentary: finale
Given the public opposition and lack of support of the Board of Commissioners for the resolution that would have significantly altered voting procedures and made them more cumbersome, restrictive and possibly illegal, the United Sovereign Americans effort to light that fire certainly did not ignite yesterday in Collier County, Fla.
The Collier County Board of Commissioners during yesterday’s meeting. (Image: CCBC)
Liberty lives in light
© 2024 by David Silverberg