SWFL election officials have questions, concerns about election security bill

State lawmakers say a new bill will make our elections more secure, but it’s being met with concerns and questions from Southwest Florida election workers.

If the legislation is signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, election officials would have a series of other changes to deal with, from changing the wording they use in their vote-by-mail instructions to conducting maintenance of their voter list every year, rather than every other year.

Tommy Doyle, the supervisor of elections for Lee County, says they processed up to 75,000 voters the last time they went through this maintenance process, dealing with people who either moved in or out of Lee County. Increasing the number of times election officials have to do this will also increase their workload.

“Now, this will double our cost, basically, and it’s gonna come in during a big election year, which will not only double our costs but put a lot of pressure on us,” Doyle said. “We have to have it done 90 days before the election, so it’s something that’ll be a little pressure to get it completed in time.”

Doyle says maintenance of voter registration is already expensive when it comes to postage, printing and return mail, but if it’s something lawmakers want them to do, they’ll do it.

This bill would create a new security office to investigate election crimes, which Florida lawmakers say would serve as an extra resource for local election supervisors to make sure there are no cases falling through the cracks. The bill would also make it a felony to collect and submit more than two vote-by-mail ballots for other voters.

But leaders with the Collier County Supervisor of Elections have questions about how this will be implemented.

“When voters come in, it is in law that you can only have up to two vote-by-mail ballots that are not for family members or immediate family members, so that’s something that we’re going to have to look at in our policies and procedures of how we would address that,” said Trish Robertson, public relations officer for the Collier County Supervisor of Elections. “It seems like a lot of what’s being implemented is going to be affecting the division of elections in the secretary of state’s office, so it’ll be interesting to see how that trickles down to the counties.”

Local election leaders also raised questions regarding the enforcement of this bill and if that will fall on law enforcement.