Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner is touring the five counties that experienced elections problems this week as part of his investigation into the issue. Visits to Lee County and Miami-Dade took place today.
A group of state elections officials, including the Secretary of State and the Division of Elections attorney, is studying what went wrong in five counties and what went right in one – Hillsborough. Lee County Supervisor of Elections Sharon Harrington said hers was a very positive meeting. She told Secretary Ken Detzner the issues in the large counties were universal starting with the length of the ballot.
“It was more difficult for our vendors to prepare our packages of mail ballots, you know with the return envelope and the instructions and all of that,” she said. “Because of the size of it, it took longer to print during early voting cause every one of those pages had to be printed and we had four here in Lee County. It took longer during the processing at the polling locations which backed up our lines,” said Harrington.
Harrington also said changes to early voting could have contributed to delays. She said they also want to re-address their precincts to make sure they didn’t cut back too much during redistricting. Detzner will make recommendations to state lawmakers. He meets with Broward and Palm Beach counties Wednesday.