The Lee Supervisor of Elections post is on the ballot for Tuesday’s state primary election.
The supervisor of elections is responsible for overseeing the county’s elections, including the registration and education of voters.
The candidates are incumbent Tommy Doyle, seeking a third term, and challenger Mick Peters, a commercial mortgage broker and entrepreneur.
Because both are Republicans and no other party has a candidate, the primary election will determine who gets the job.
Throughout Doyle’s tenure, he and his team have weathered two hard-hitting hurricanes in Ian and Irma, the COVID-19 pandemic, and three major election reform bills from the Florida Senate. He says his ability to adapt in the position is a major part of his platform.
"Well, right now we have made a ton of changes. I've told my staff that we don't have problems, we have situations, and we find solutions."
However, his opponent Mick Peters says that he believes Doyle’s office is failing to complete its responsibilities — and potentially enabling fraud.
"We have entirely too many dead people, deceased voters on our rolls. Tommy Doyle is bragging about the fact that he got rid of 6,000 last year and 4,000 this year. But when you look at our death numbers per the Department of vital statistics, we're losing about 11,000 people a year in this county."
Peters also takes issue with the length of voting lines, allegedly failing voting machines, and a claim of non-citizen voter registration.
“The deceased voters are just a very small segment of this. There's illegal aliens that are registered, that are legal aliens that are registered, and you're supposed to be a citizen, and none of those folks are.”
Doyle takes Peters’ accusations of alleged mishandling elections personally.
"It’s a disrespect to my entire staff, and he’s thinking that, possibly, I don’t know if he’s thinking that we’re committing fraud, but there’s fraud in our process."
If Peters is elected, changes he intends to make include adding polling locations, lobbying the state Legislature to get rid of voting machines — instead hand-counting ballots — and reviewing voter rolls for deceased voters.
If Doyle is elected, he’s looking to improve the structure of his department and the use of office space. He also hopes to continue implementing measures he’s introduced, like a streamlined vote-by-mail process, and an independent election auditing system.
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