![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Vote-Denied-300x172.png\" "\\"Vote-Denied\\"")
In Lehigh Acres, Elections Supervisor\u00a0Sharon Harrington and her office excluded nearly 500 voters from casting a ballot in a race impacting Lehigh Acres\u2019 future.<\/p>\nIn Lehigh Acres, Elections Supervisor\u00a0Sharon Harrington and her office excluded nearly 500 voters from casting a ballot in a race impacting Lehigh Acres\u2019 future.<\/p>\n
Lehigh Acres voters, living in the Varsity Lakes subdivision near Lehigh Senior High School, they were not given the opportunity to vote for three seats on the Lehigh Acres\u00a0Municipal Services Improvement District. Harrington blamed the mistake, discovered last week, on a new mapping software system\u00a0where those voters were actually placed outside the district.<\/p>\n
Harrington\u2019s response to fixing the problem is to not deal with it until after the election \u2013 if the race happens to be close and legal action ensues by the any of the candidates or by the voters. Harrington said Monday she was told by the state elections office\u00a0to not attempt to fix the problem prior to the Nov. 8 general election. But the state elections office have emailed The Lehigh Acres Gazette that “the final decision on how to proceed rests solely at the county level” because there “is no provision in Florida law that allows for special provisional\/supplemental ballots to be created\/issued.”<\/p>\n
Harrington, who is up for re-election next week, said her office discussed some solutions but came to no legal resolution. The completed ballots\u00a0by those voters cannot be disallowed and new ballots cast because that could jeopardize the security of the 184,647\u00a0ballots already returned by mail or in early voting. Harrington said the impacted\u00a0voters can’t be mailed a separate ballot with just those races because state law prohibits an all-mail election. She also says there is no way for her office to tabulate these votes even if it was done on a provisional basis.<\/p>\n
We believe if the only recourse available for these voters is legal action, we recommend they do it. They have a legal right to have their ballots cast. Because there is no provision in state law for this situation, we recommend the state develop policies so local offices have some guidance, like:<\/p>\n
Allow\u00a0for\u00a0voters to fill out a provisional ballot at their precinct on Election Day and have their votes tabulated.<\/p>\n
Bring those voters into an\u00a0the election\u2019s office prior to election day, give them a ballot with the missing race or races and have them mark their choices.<\/p>\n
Those provisional ballots would only be used if the outcomes of the three races were close and those votes needed to determine the winners.<\/p>\n
Not dealing with the problem until post-election, creates a countless of nightmares for not only the candidates, the local and state elections office and the voters themselves. How can the voters possibly\u00a0trust a process where the only workable solution ahead of the election is not to have one?<\/p>\n
It is the ultimate responsibility of the supervisor of elections is make sure all\u00a0registered voters have\u00a0the opportunity to cast ballots in\u00a0elections for\u00a0all races where they are legally permitted to do so. Any result short of that is not acceptable at all.<\/p>\n
Her method of alerting people to the mistake seemed to be very limited. Not all media\u00a0typically on the elections office email list received information. Also, the impacted voters have not been notified by her office.<\/p>\n
The Lehigh Acres Gazette staff has wondered how the mistake got this far in the first place because names and races must be ready for a ballot over a month\u00a0ahead of time, which gave her office ample time to proof all\u00a0ballots and make sure they were\u00a0accurate. Harrington said Monday there was no way her office could have found the mistake because the computer made some sort of “auto correction” without their knowledge. This correction became an error and a system of checks must be put in place to proof technology, so that this does not occur again.<\/p>\n
This is not the type of mistake Harrington needs only a week prior to the election. Harrington\u2019s last four years have been marred by\u00a0spending mistakes for new computer equipment, plus the debacle over the 2012 election when people waited five hours \u2013 or longer \u2013 to vote.<\/p>\n
These Lehigh\u00a0Acres voters deserve better than being placed on hold until after Nov. 8. There are solutions and they need to be executed now!!!!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Lehigh Acres, Elections Supervisor\u00a0Sharon Harrington and her office excluded nearly 500 voters from casting a ballot in a race impacting Lehigh Acres\u2019 future. Lehigh Acres voters, living in the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}