LEE COUNTY, Fla. — It’s three days after Election Day and volunteers are still busy counting hundreds of thousands of ballots in a crucial state like Arizona that could decide the balance of power in congress.
Control of the senate all comes down to tight races in both Arizona and Nevada, and 23 races in the house are still undecided.
Meanwhile, Florida’s elections offices are closing up shop with the 2022 election nearly over, even though some ballots will not get counted in the state.
Lee County alone has 300 mail ballots that were returned after the Election Day deadline however, none of them will be opened or ever counted.
As Lee County Election Supervisor Tommy Doyle explained, that is because all mail ballots must be returned by 7 p.m. on election night.
So, the 300 ballots came in after that time and more are expected to trickle in during the coming days.
“They’re put away for 22 months and then destroyed,” Doyle said. The ballots are never even opened.”
However, other states like Arizona continue to open mail ballots as long as they’re postmarked by election day.
Some longtime voters in Florida recall the days two decades ago when Florida was thrust into the national spotlight with election controversy.
The state was ridiculed after taking weeks to count the votes.
FGCU Political Science Professor Dr. Sandra Pavelka recalls the negative light the situation cast on the state after it took weeks to count the votes.
“We were basically the laughingstock of the country. We had a special investigation with hanging chads,” Pavelka said.
Bernie Feliciano was a Lee County election worker 22 years ago and remembers spending long days sitting at tables examining the punch card ballots that were used.
“The voter had not punched all the way through on the punch card,” Feliciano explained.
That created the term hanging chad, dimpled chad and pregnant chad.
Feliciano and thousands of elections workers state-wide spent weeks examining the punch cards.
“At the end of four or five days, the bottoms of our elbows were bruised. They were raw from sliding them up and down on the table,” Feliciano recalled.
The punch card system was eventually outlawed in Florida. The state went to touchscreens which were also outlawed before the state returned to paper ballots.
A system Tommy Doyle now believes has been perfected.
“A lot of states are going to the model that Florida has,” Doyle concluded.
As other states still count votes, Lee County was able to turn out the lights and shut the doors by 11:15 p.m. on election night despite working under emergency conditions with just 12 voting locations open because of Hurricane Ian.
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