CAPE CORAL, Fla -- Early voting will begin Monday in Florida. Thursday morning, the Lee County Supervisor of Elections Office is doing some testing to make sure its machines are ready to count those votes.
This is all following a glitch discovered during the initial logic and accuracy test Monday. There was an issue with a percentage of the voting machines that will be used at early voting sites and at the polls on Election Day.
The office decided to put a 48-hour hold on testing. The new test will take place at 9:00 a.m.
The good news is it only has to re-test this percentage of the machines, which means there was no impact to the process of tabulating vote-by-mail ballots. During the original test, they tested the equipment used to tabulate those and canvass the troubled ballots received as of Monday. The office got approval to begin processing them that day, as scheduled.
This is important, given the increase in mail-in voting this election. Right now, more than 251,000 vote-by-mail ballots have been requested. The latest stats show nearly 115,000 of them have been cast.
Thursday's meeting is open to the public. It will be held at the Lee County Elections Center at 13180 S. Cleveland Ave., Fort Myers, FL 33906.
