LEE COUNTY, The coronavirus pandemic has made voting more expensive, considering the masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer poll workers need at every station.
Then, there’s mail-in ballot costs. The reason Lee County Elections Supervisor Tommy Doyle said the state needs the $20 million in federal funding allocated for just that.
“With huge increase in vote-by-mail, we’re going to need a lot. The postage is very expensive. So, we’re hoping to get some of that to help us with postage,” said Doyle.
As of Tuesday afternoon, he said about 400,000 lee county voters have requested vote by mail ballots. That’s 51 percent of the county. Doyle’s expecting that to jump to 70 percent come November.
He’s estimated the county will need about $800,000, including paying for the return postage costs.
Collier County Supervisor of Elections Jennifer Edwards expects the 60,000 mail-in requests in her county to rise, too. In a survey to the Florida Division of Elections, she estimated they’d need $244,000 for all the costs associated with mailing.
“Paper supplies for the ballots, as well as the envelopes, as well as the secrecy sleeve that's inside that envelope,” she said. “Is there going to be enough for every county to get their wishlist, I don’t know.”
Governor Ron DeSantis has not requested the federal funding. Florida would also have to fund 20 percent of it. Doyle doesn’t think the state will receive it all.
“The state would have to come up with $4 million, and that’s a sticking point right now. Especially with state revenues probably dropping because of the pandemic,” he said.
So, he’s bracing to budget for the additional costs with what the elections office already has. pushing for waived precinct laws with the other 66 supervisors. He’s also hoping to shrink the number of polling places in Lee County from 125 to 15.
“We’re hoping with early voting that people will show up to vote early, and on voting day, we won’t have that many people show up, and we can keep the social distance,” he said.
Doyle added he’ll likely reduce the number of poll workers counting from 2,000 to less than 500.
