Over the past four years, candidates running for office all over the country have cast doubt on the integrity of elections. Many have taken their cues from former President Donald Trump, who continues to put forth baseless and false claims about rigged elections.
One newspaper’s editorial board had enough.
The Sun Sentinel in South Florida recently refused to endorse a candidate for office, in part, because of that candidate’s claims of fraudulent elections. Not only did the editorial board endorse the other candidate, it published a lengthy explanation, which included why it refused to even run a questionnaire sent in by the candidate, which it said was full of “myths and falsehoods.”
And get this, the office in question was supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County!
In a scathing piece, the Sun Sentinel editorial board wrote:
For the first time, the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board will not publish online a questionnaire submitted by a candidate. It was submitted by Jeff Buongiorno, an elections conspiracy theorist and the Republican candidate for supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County.
Buongiorno’s questionnaire is replete with myths and falsehoods. He doubts the reliability of Florida election results because, he said, they cannot be “manually verified.” Voting tabulation machines are tested frequently and results are audited, then certified by a canvassing board usually chaired by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Buongiorno claims without evidence that “public trust in our elections has eroded to new lows,” when any mistrust is largely due to Donald Trump’s continued lie that he won the 2020 election. Election results in Florida are extremely reliable.
Buongiorno actively works to undermine public faith in voting by mail. Citing a group called Defend Florida, he claimed in his questionnaire that 20% of Florida’s mail ballots in 2020 were cast by “phantom” voters who were dead or who voted from phony addresses.
Really? More than 11 million Floridians voted in 2020, so 20% of that would be more than 2.2 million people. Such claims are recklessly irresponsible and seek only to undermine faith in honest elections. We wish to publish all candidate questionnaires, but as a trusted media source, we cannot knowingly publish these falsehoods. We are endorsing Wendy Sartory Link for Palm Beach County supervisor of elections.
A gutsy and completely appropriate stance by the Sun Sentinel editorial board.
Steve Bousquet, the opinion editor and columnist for the Sun Sentinel who helped make the decision to not run Buongiorno’s questionnaire, told me in an email, “We received two letters to the editor from readers on our decision, one strongly supportive and one highly critical. One reader said that the media has a responsibility not to perpetuate disinformation, and the other said our decision was ‘insane’ and readers can make up their own minds.”
Later, by phone, Bousquet told me that in its endorsement of Buongiorno’s opponent, the Sun Sentinel website did include a 40-minute or so video interview with Buongiorno in which he repeats many of the false or misleading claims from his questionnaire. Bousquet said that he was aware the news organization would be accused of censorship for not printing Buongiorno’s comments.
“But,” Bousquet said, “we can’t be a transmission belt for blatant misinformation.”
This piece originally appeared in The Poynter Report, our daily newsletter for everyone who cares about the media. Subscribe to The Poynter Report here.
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