Ballots by mail may hit record in Broward

Supervisor of Elections Peter Antonacci said Tuesday he’s preparing for a record voter turnout in November’s presidential election and a staggering increase in the number of county voters who use mail balloting in November.

■ As many as 65% of the people who cast ballots in the November presidential election in Broward could choose to vote by mail, Antonacci said. Voting by mail has been growing in popularity in Florida, but never on the scale of what may happen this year in a world upended by the coronavirus pandemic.

■ Starting next week, Antonacci’s office will mail out 200,000 postcards a day to Broward registered voters who haven’t signed up to vote by mail, asking if they want mail ballots for the August primary and November general elections. Each voter will get a postage-paid return card to sign and send back to get on the mail voting list.

■ In addition to a change in the way people vote, Antonacci is planning for an increase in voter turnout — to 75% of Broward’s 1.2 million registered voters. That would be a higher percentage and more votes than in 2016, when Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy produced a surge of interest, and more than in 2008, when Barack Obama’s historic candidacy attracted many new voters to the polls.

Vote by mail

Antonacci gave his 65% voteby-mail projection during a lengthy discussion Tuesday with the Broward County Commission as he asked for, and received, millions of dollars to help pay for processing the expected large increase in mail voting. In the 2016 presidential election, 203,134 Broward voters cast mail ballots, which

works out to 24% of the people who voted. In 2008, 137,401 voters cast mail ballots, which is 18.6% of the 739,861 who voted.

If Antonacci’s maximum projected turnout takes place, and mail balloting hits 65%, that would work out to almost 784,000 mail ballots, something County Commissioner Steve Geller termed, in an understatement, “a really high number.”

Presidential turnout

Enormous interest in the presidential election has Antonacci planning for 75% turnout. In 2016 the TrumpHillary Clinton election in, 71.6% of Broward’s registered voters went to the polls. In the 2008 ObamaJohn McCain election, Broward turnout was 73.4%.

The total number of registered voters in the county is now more than 1.2 million — larger than it was in either 2016 or 2008. So even the same percentage of registered voters from either of those two high-interest contests would mean more total votes.

August turnout

Antonacci said he also expects

higher than usual voter turnout in the Aug. 18 primary contests and nonpartisan elections for School Board members and judicial seats.

He expects an average countywide turnout of 25%. In 2016, August turnout was 16.6%. Four years earlier, it was 10.7%.

This year the county has an unusually large number of highly competitive, important contests in August.

The marquee race is the primary featuring former Sheriff Scott Israel, appointed Sheriff Gregory Tony, and a slew of other candidates. But there are also contests for offices that haven’t been open in a long time or are drawing an unusual amount of interest for other reasons.

Voters will pick nominees to fill the office of State Attorney Mike Satz, who was first elected in 1976; replace Public Defender Howard Finkelstein, who is retiring after four terms; between Clerk of Courts Brenda Forman and the former Court Clerk Howard Forman, her ex-husband; and someone to follow Antonacci, who was appointed to finish out the term of former Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes.

Broward County is so overwhelmingly Democratic that the party’s primaries for all those offices will effectively decide who will take over each of those offices.

Money

Running elections during the coronavirus pandemic create “very serious planning and budgeting problems,” Antonacci said. Translation: more money.

County commissioners approved an immediate infusion of $2.3 million for Antonacci’s office, mostly for new equipment. The spending includes:

■ $2.3 million for equipment. That includes a third machine, costing $750,000, to process outgoing mail ballots and process them again when they’re returned to the office. New ballot ondemand printers for early voting sites would allow fast printing of customized ballots at regional centers, minimizing time voters have to wait.

■ $350,000 for the mailer going to a total of 1 million voters who haven’t already requested vote-by-mail ballots. Antonacci said he expects a large response, up from about 200 people a day who are currently signing up to vote by mail. About 215,000 people are signed up to vote by mail. By August, Antonacci said that number could hit 400,000.

■ $200,000 for the larger volume of mail ballots going out and coming back — the county pays return postage — in August.

■ $231,000 in coronavirus related supplies for August.

■ $65,000 for post-election cleaning the School District is requiring at more than 100 precincts located in schools. Antonacci said the same level of cleaning would also be done at non-school voting sites.

Other counties

Supervisors of Elections in Palm Beach and MiamiDade counties and elsewhere have also said they they expect a vastly different voting experience in the coronavirus era.

Both Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties are sending vote-by-mail request forms to all registered voters.

Suzy Trutie, a deputy Miami-Dade County supervisor of elections, said Tuesday by email that 270,000 of the county’s 1.48 million registered voters have vote-bymail requests on file. “We wouldn’t be surprised if the volume of vote by mail doubled in the coming months as a result of COVID-19,” she said.

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link couldn’t be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Antonacci