In all my years of voting I have never seen an official notice like the one that appeared in the newspaper yesterday. I don't know if this is the result of some new law or if I just haven't been paying attention all this time.
Our Supervisor of Elections, who has been trying to recover some semblance of competency after the fiasco of two- and three-hour waiting lines during the last presidential election, placed a half-page advertisement/public notice in English and Spanish on page 2 of the local paper. It's title is "Canvassing Board Meetings and Logic and Accuracy Testing Schedule" and it opens up all the inner workings of the elections office to public scrutiny (which may have been the case already, but who knew?).
For starters, we actually have four elections happening together on March 15: two separate municipal elections (City of Bonita Springs and Town of Fort Myers Beach), and a referendum special election for the Matlacha/Pine Island Fire District as well as the presidential primaries for both Republicans and Democrats. Only the "D" primary applies to me.
The next section of the notice lists the 10 early voting stations and their days and hours of operation. I've never seen that published before although I'm sure it must have been. One of the polling places is our library and I'm there often enough that I couldn't miss it if I wanted to.
The most interesting part, however, is the chart that makes up the bottom half of the notice giving the dates, times locations and tests to be done to insure the completeness and accuracy of the election(s). For instance, the first line:
DATE TIME EVENT LOCATION PURPOSE
03-01-16 9:00 AM logic and accuracy Lee County Election Center Test, by a random method of
Tuesday testing 13180 S Cleveland Ave selection, the voting machines
Fort Myers 33907 to be used in the election during
early voting and at the precincts
on Election Day
There follows: Test absentee ballot tabulators (also 3/1 right after the logic testing) and initial canvass of already-received absentee ballots. Then on Thursday, review of absentee ballots followed by more absentee ballots on Tuesday (election Day) and receipt of unofficial election results, then provisional ballots on Friday 3/18, overseas ballots and election certification on Friday 3/25 and a manual audit the following Monday 3/28. All of which is very explicitly open to the public. As it should be.
I may just have to cross the river and check this all out.
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