Broward County Preparing For Start Of Early Voting
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FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – With two weeks to go before the August 28th primary, the Broward Supervisor of elections office is gearing up for the start of early voting,
On Tuesday, crews at the Lauderhill warehouse began loading trucks with machines and supplies to send to the 21 designated early voting sites in Broward County.
Early voting starts Saturday in Broward and will run nine days.
"Our people love weekends and this includes both the two weekends leading up to August 28th," said Supervisor of Elections Dr Brenda Snipes.
Snipes says the decision to have fewer early voting days is based in part on historical data and the early start of school.
Timetables aside, she said safeguards are in place to protect against hacking thanks to a boost from the state.
"We did receive a million dollars and we invested in technology that will allow the election to be more secure," she said.
While the election may be secure the supervisor has faced down intense criticism in the past year.
In May, a judge found she broke the law by too quickly destroying ballots from the 2016 primary race between Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and challenger Tim Canova.
Then on Friday the court ruled on a republican party challenge on how mail-in ballots are processed, ordering her office 'to keep the ballots unopened until all members of the canvassing board publicly meet to canvass the vote-by-mail ballots.'
The ruling was just amended to require two sets of eyes, not three, but the supervisor disagrees on the court's interpretation of the law.
"In secret doesn't describe this office. I think the judge didn't take everything into consideration," Snipes said.
But in the plus column, the supervisor she said she doesn't see a lot of voter apathy.
"Our voters are turned off by mean spirited ads and I haven't seen a lot of that this time," she said. "They are getting the ballots back in."
Snipes said out of 195,000 mail-in ballots sent out from her office, 43,000 have been returned already which is a respectable number this early in a primary election.
