Seminole overspending on new voter cards

Since all politics is local, political oversight should be too. Recently, every voter in Seminole County received a new voter card and a form to sign up for Vote-ByMail (VBM). My husband and I had already signed up for Vote-By-Mail and had our ID cards, so we couldn’t help but wonder how much money Chris Anderson, our Supervisor of Elections, had thrown away.

His current budget at the county’s website showed $139,500 for postage and $40,000 for printing to all 320,035 voters, which adds up to about 56 cents each. In 2018, there were 74,329 of us who had VBM requests, according to VoteSeminole.org. If all of us got those cards, the cost of unnecessary mailers adds up to $41,624.

The first rule of belt-tightening in my household is: Don’t spend money on what you don’t need. At a time when our state budgets are being gutted and election officials are begging for federal grants, just think of how much that $41,624 could have bought — perhaps a salary for a real person to answer the phone?

Mary Ann Coffey Longwood