A lawsuit filed in Leon County against the local elections supervisor and the secretary of state urges officials to make mail balloting the go-to method of voting in the state to deal with uncertainties about future coronavirus outbreaks.
Mark Earley, the county’s supervisor of elections and a defendant in the complaint, said all-mail voting requires a complicated process that includes getting approvals from the post office, coordinating envelopes according to state law and accurately matching addresses with voters.
“Even if ordered, we wouldn’t be able to do it,” Earley told the Florida Record. “... These are very specific types of mailings that have to have a lot of checks and balances.”
Mark Earley oversees Leon County elections.
It would take two years to ramp up capacity to mail ballots to all registered voters and perform the needed coordination with vendors, he said.
The plaintiffs in the complaint filed earlier this month include former Marion County Sheriff’s Capt. Dennis McFatten; Cynthia Cotto Grimes, an Ocala minister; and a Miami man confined to his home. The lawsuit argues that people in high-risk groups should have alternative means of voting since no one knows for sure whether virus outbreaks will occur during the August primary vote or the November general election.
But county officials are doing everything they can reasonably do to ensure voters will have the opportunity to cast their ballots, Earley said. Under current law, all voters can request a mail-in ballot, and the election supervisor has urged voters who think they may need one to request a ballot as early as possible, so that election officials are not swamped with requests at the last minute.
“One of the things they’re asking for (in the lawsuit) is for 100 percent of voters to be sent a vote-by-mail ballot,” he said. “Currently, that’s illegal without getting a request.”
And even when voters request and receive mail-in ballots, they are not required to use them if they later decide to vote in person, according to Earley.
“That’s why I called it voting insurance,” he said.
The county election supervisors’ association, Florida Supervisors of Elections, recently sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis urging that early voting at designated locations be extended 22 days so that it will be easier for voters to follow social-distancing rules. Supervisors also want to expand the time period for sending out mail ballots.
Other voting-rights complaints are working their way through circuit courts in Florida, according to Earley, who added that it was unclear why he was listed as a defendant in this case since none of the plaintiffs is from Leon County.