Tracking Impact of Hurricane Ian on Florida Voting
Hurricane Ian devastated areas of southwest Florida with its storm surge and winds, and its destructive path continued across the peninsula with torrential rainfall in the center of the state. There is concern that election officials will find it difficult to run a normal election for voters. Election officials will need to find replacements for some polling locations damaged by the storm and manage volunteers who may no longer be available to work. Mail balloting is a solution to assist people who have been dislocated from their residences, but navigating the mail ballot system is not necessarily easy for people whose mail box is gone with their home.
Florida election officials have begun sending out mail ballots, and there are the first hints of the difficulties that lie ahead in the statistics for returned mail ballots.
Now, keep in mind, a good number of the ballots that have been sent out and returned are from military and overseas civilian voters who — by federal law — were sent their mail ballots no later than 45 days prior to the election.
Still, there are some counties that have already seen a fair number of returned mail ballots from domestic voters because they began delivering ballots to voters before Thursday, the deadline for election officials to mail out all ballots to those who had requested them in advance of the election. It is these statistics that potentially show a slow start to mail balloting in southwest and central Florida.
As a percent of the ballots that have been sent out by election officials, the return rate in southwest and central Florida is lagging many other parts of the state, even extending to the west coast along Ian’s track. There are other counties in north Florida and along the panhandle that are also off to slow starts, so this is not definitive evidence that Ian has crippled the upcoming election. This pattern may just be a coincidence that has nothing to do with hurricane Ian. Election officials may have only been slightly affected and will — as the professionals they are — recover quickly. Let’s all hope so. In the coming days, I will continue to monitor these patterns for potential effects of hurricane Ian on Florida’s elections.