Construction crews repair a bridge on Matlacha Island, in Florida’s Lee County, on Wednesday. Lee County elections officials are scrambling to figure out a plan for this fall’s election.
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Construction crews repair a bridge on Matlacha Island, in Florida’s Lee County, on Wednesday. Lee County elections officials are scrambling to figure out a plan for this fall’s election.
Win McNamee / Getty Images
Florida elections officials say they will meet a Thursday deadline to vote by mail to voters for this year’s midterm elections, despite widespread flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Ian last week.
However, in disadvantaged areas, in-person voting remains the biggest concern.
Tommy Doyle, election supervisor in Lee County – where Ian landing in Florida – said there were initially concerns about voting by mail because the county’s local printing and mailing house lost power. Since this past Sunday, however, he says the supplier has been able to assemble those mail-in ballots.
“We got the job done,” Doyle said in an interview Thursday. “We got them out in time.”
Mark Earley, election supervisor in Leon County in Florida’s Panhandle, and president of the state’s association of election supervisors, said all 67 counties in Florida were able to mail ballots. timely. He said the infrastructure around the state for mail-in ballots was not affected by the deadly storm.
“All counties met those deadlines,” says Earley. “I think it’s phenomenal – and I think that corroborates our learning experiences from previous storms.”
In 2018, for example, Hurricane Michael devastated the Panama City area in late October — just before the midterm elections that year. It raised a a bunch of problems to local election officials.
Meanwhile, areas affected by Hurricane Ian have more time before Election Day, on November 8 this year.
Doyle said his Lee County staff worked incredibly hard to make voting “as easy as possible” for voters affected by the storm. He said the county has sent out about 170,000 ballots so far, and people are still asking for ballots by mail every day.
Many ballots by mail will have nowhere to go
But not all of those ballots are expected to reach voters affected by Hurricane Ian.
“The post office will try to deliver,” Doyle said. “But there will be places where they can’t deliver – they can’t even get to.”
In that case, he said, the Postal Service has alternate locations for people to pick up their ballots for up to 10 days after attempting to deliver. Doyle said he also urged Lee County voters to contact his office so it can send them another ballot to whatever address they are at as a result of the storm.
Earley said that getting ballots by mail for those affected by the hurricane remains one of a list of issues the governor may need to address.
For now, he said, it’s unclear whether election officials will need Governor Ron DeSantis to sign an executive order extending the deadline voters have to change addresses on their vote-by-mail requests.
“It might need an order, it might not need an order,” says Earley. “Those are some of the things that are being considered.”
In-person voting is a big concern
Earley said elections officials in Southwest Florida are also still assessing whether in-person polling places will still stand after the storm.
In Lee County, Doyle said it has 12 “good to go” early voting locations and will be able to serve voters. However, he said, getting the 99 polling places they intended to have and work for Election Day was not possible.
“We don’t have the capacity to hold a constituency vote,” said Doyle.
On Thursday, he said his office was able to confirm 30 of the county’s 99 Election Day locations. “The rest you can’t contact, or they have damage,” he said.
Earley said that DeSantis will likely need to sign an order allowing counties like Lee County to operate early voting centers on Election Day, so a voter can vote at any of the centers instead. are only allowed to vote in their designated area.
Asked this week, Republican DeSantis said the state is waiting for a response from counties affected by the storm. He said in particular Lee County is expected to propose solutions for how the state can help, because officials there will likely need the most flexibility.
DeSantis says there is precedent for vote centers on Election Day after a storm – including Hurricane Michael. In general, though, he said he doesn’t want to make too many changes to the way elections normally go.
“I want to keep it as normal as possible,” he said at a news conference on Wednesday. “I think the more you depart, the more problems it creates.”
Doyle said it has become clear that giving vote centers the green light on Election Day is “much needed” in Lee County, and he hopes that will be resolved soon.
Even small changes to the way elections are held can have an impact in Florida, where electoral margins are often slim. DeSantis is among the candidates in the Florida ballot this fall, as he seeks re-election.
His considerations about approving voting changes after the storm come after he signed a series of reforms to state election laws to tighten access. Among those changes are new restrictions on the voting mailbox.
DeSantis won 60% of votes in Lee County in 2018, when he was first elected.
