The lawsuit filed Friday in Orange County circuit court<\/a> alleges an associate of Rose\u2019s campaign \u201cgave or promised things of value to voters in exchange for their votes,\u201d and also that the campaign was \u201cballot harvesting.\u201d<\/p>\nIt asks for a judge to toss out the results of the election or to declare Hill the winner.<\/p>\n
The certified election results show Rose received nearly 52% of ballots cast, with Hill receiving about 33%. While there was a sizeable 452-vote margin between the two, if Rose had received just 44 fewer votes she would have failed to exceed the 50% mark and would have been forced into a runoff with Hill in December.<\/p>\n
Rose did not return a request for comment Monday and hasn\u2019t commented publicly on the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Hill\u2019s allegations center on a flyer offering free health screenings and $45 Visa gift cards. The flyer had the city logo and Rose\u2019s photo, presumably as part of her official capacity as the interim city commissioner.<\/p>\n
It also had a QR code to sign up, and on that webpage was an advertisement reading \u201cSupport Shan Rose,\u201d about her campaign for a full term on the city council.<\/p>\n
The complaint states that after Rose was made aware of the advertisement on Nov. 7, three days after the election, it was deleted.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit also contends that Rose\u2019s campaign collected ballots from people at a nursing home in the district, citing interviews from seniors there who said they didn\u2019t vote despite ballots being cast under their names.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpon information and belief, the number of illegal votes harvested by Defendant Rose\u2019s campaign were sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election,\u201d the suit states.<\/p>\n
While the lawsuit lists a few seniors who claimed they didn\u2019t vote when asked by a supporter of Hill\u2019s, their votes fall well short of the amount needed to change the result of the race.<\/p>\n
A hearing in the matter hadn\u2019t yet been scheduled.<\/p>\n
Hill was indicted last year on charges related to elderly abuse and fraud. Upon her suspension by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Rose won a special election to serve out the final year-plus of Hill\u2019s term.<\/p>\n
The charges have yet to be resolved and no trial has been set. Hill has a court hearing in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest chapter in the saga of Regina Hill may play out in court. Hill, who was suspended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2811,28,114,266,115,1335,139,141,140,99,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-50240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-election","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-orange-county","14":"tag-orlando","15":"tag-orlando-headlines","16":"tag-orlando-news","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}