In The Spotlight: An Inside Look At The Lack Of Legal Authority For Local Election Officials in Florida

Many aspects of life have changed with the COVID-19 pandemic. But elections go on. Local and state officials are adapting to the new reality: redesigning polling places according to health guidelines and creating strategies to promote voting by mail among citizens.

Local election officials in Florida’s Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county, follow strict rules from state officials, according to Suzy Trutie, the county’s deputy supervisor of elections. Miami-Dade has only postponed one of its many municipal elections, and officials continue to allow residents to vote in person at any of the polling locations. In April, election officials sent mail-in ballot requests to all households in the county to promote absentee voting in the August primary and November general elections. In an interview, Trutie discussed changes in local elections and how officials in Florida are dealing with their lack of legal authority to implement new voting methods.

Editor’s note: This interview has been slightly edited and condensed.

How have local elections been affected during this pandemic compared to other services like restaurants, hospitals and airlines?

I think it’s going to affect us from a personnel perspective in the sense of, for example, at a particular polling place where in the past we may have had 10 people [working there,] we may not need 10 staffers because there will be less voters there, so we’ll have less people working the polling place. However, we will need more people working on the vote by mail perspective. So, for us, it’s a matter of shifting our personnel and adjusting to that.

I think it’s also affected us from a protective equipment perspective. In the past, we’ve always had just basic things like disinfectant wipes and disinfectant spray and hand sanitizer. Now, certainly, we have to have more protective equipment, not only at the polling places, but at our work sites. So that also has affected us, I would say. Those will probably be the biggest effects that we have felt: The personnel and, as far as protective gear, that we need to protect our employees and the public.

What made you decide that Miami-Dade County would join others in the state that have sent mail-in ballot requests to registered voters ahead of the August Primary and November General Elections?

It was actually the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners that directed us to send a letter and a request form to all households who currently don’t have a request on file. So, that’s what we’re doing, at the direction of our board: We are sending a letter and a vote by mail request form to all households in Miami-Dade County, where at least one registered voter does not have a vote by mail request on file. So that is the mailing that we, in Miami-Dade County, will be doing. That’s going to go to over 700,000 households because, currently, in the county we have 1.48 million registered voters, and of those 1.48 million registered voters, over 270,000 currently have a vote by mail request on file.

For us, given the climate right now that we are experiencing with the COVID-19 virus and for health reasons, we certainly want every single one of our voters to know that we take their health into great consideration. We want to send this letter out and let people know that you have the option: You can vote by mail; however, you can also vote in person if you want to during early voting or election day. So, we just wanted to inform our voter of what our plans are for the primary and general elections. We will still have three forms of voting: vote by mail, early voting and election day.

But again, given [the COVID-19 pandemic] we want to make sure that if voters feel more comfortable voting from the safety of their home, we give them the request form. So, we’re mailing it to them and giving them the option of filling it out and mailing it back to us or they can fill it out online.

What goes into the process of making the decision to send requests to all households?

Well, in the state of Florida there are Florida statutes that govern elections. So, there are certain laws that we have to follow when it comes to vote by mail, early voting and election day. For example, early voting, the maximum number of days that you can have early voting in the state of Florida is 14 days, and we always take the maximum number of days. On election day, you can only vote at your assigned precinct – that is also a Florida law. When it comes to vote by mail, there are certain deadlines: The last day for you to request a vote by mail ballot is 10 days before the election. Those are all Florida laws that we have to follow.

Many members of the GOP and the current administration have openly opposed to voting by mail. Do you anticipate seeing resistance or opposition from voters to do so?

Actually, we anticipate having more people vote by mail for August and for November. That’s what we are projecting, we are projecting more people will participate and vote by mail than they will in person. That is based on the fact that it’s because of the coronavirus, that people have been quarantined in their homes and people are concerned about their safety. So, we anticipate due to those health reasons more people will want to vote by mail than they will in person.

For us, we see it as the voter method in which the voter is most comfortable voting. For our elections department, we really do not get involved in the politics of any of the rhetoric. For us, it really is providing a service to the voters of Miami-Dade County. So, for us the priority is making sure that the voter has a choice: If they want to vote by mail, we want to give the voter that opportunity, if the voter wants to vote in person, we want to give them that opportunity. We truly are a ministerial department to provide a service only.

How are you planning for the increase in votes by mail?

We are planning for that increase and how do we plan for that? By making sure that we have enough staff that will be able to handle the influx of the vote by mail ballots that were coming in. At the same time, we will continue to work with all of our polling place locations to make sure that we have in-person voting available, but we do see more people voting in both elections by vote by mail.

How has this pandemic affected the timeline for organizing the elections compared to previous years?

Well, our operations have always continued. We never stopped coming to the office, we’ve been splitting our time between work and home. Given the nature of elections, there are certain functions we have to perform in the office, so we have been just dividing our time.

All of Miami-Dade County Government has continued to provide programs and services to all of our residents. What we have done is that we have shifted the work model where we’re working between home as well as the office. There are certain duties that we have to perform in the office, for example, if we receive voter registration applications, those have to be reviewed and input here at the office. That sort of operation cannot take place at home. If we receive [candidate] petitions, the same thing. Or, for initiative petitions, that has to be reviewed in the office. So, for us, it has just been shifting the way we work in order to accommodate the health crisis that has been taking place.

We have offices and we have cubicles, so we don’t have [a situation] where we’re stacked on top of each other. We make sure that people are six feet apart if there are more than one person in a room, we make sure to adhere to that. We all have masks, we all have gloves, we have hand sanitizer, we have disinfectant wipes. If you’re a member of the public or you are an employee, the moment you come into the building, we have temperature read. The moment you come into the office, that’s the first thing you’re going to experience. You’re going to get your temperature read and if it’s above I believe it’s 98.4, you cannot come into the building. Those are all the measures we’ve taken, and we have also ordered additional equipment. For example, we’ve ordered face shields, we have also ordered partitions so that we can insert those into different places in the building if we don’t have that six feet right now. Those are all the protective measures we’re using for not only the employees, but for members of the public that come to our building.

Is it possible Miami-Dade County will have to postpone elections in August?

It’s not a scenario, no. We, in Miami-Dade County, are the largest county so we have 34 municipalities. Every month we have elections, and we only had to reschedule one election which was originally scheduled for April 7, and that has now been rescheduled for August 18, which is the primary election. Every other election has taken place in Miami-Dade County and in the state of Florida.

In the state of Florida, you have three ways to vote: you can either vote by mail, early voting or on the election date. None of that has changed, that is state law. State law currently says that we have three ways to vote and that is we what we have continued doing, even amidst the coronavirus. It hasn’t changed.

So, why not follow other states’ lead and make everybody vote by mail and reduce person-to-person contact on Election Night?

In the state of Florida, we work with the State of Florida’s Division of Elections and we take our direction from the state. Right now, in the state, operations are going back to normal and every single county has reopened. So, the State of Florida’s Division of Elections has told us to continue planning the elections [without altering anything,] and that’s what we’re doing.

[Implementing other ways of voting, like curbside voting] would have to be a result of a change in state law, we cannot implement that. Something of that nature would have to be done through either the Florida Legislature changes the law, or the Division of Elections changes a procedure, or the governor executes an executive order. For us in the state of Florida, it cannot be a county decision, it has to be a state law decision.

We continue to plan accordingly. Honestly, it’s very difficult for me to project because I can’t speak for the state level. But for us, we will continue to plan for the three ways of voting and continue with that particular model, that’s what we’re going to continue to do.

Do you think the way people vote this year will be a factor in how future elections are carried out?

I think this is new territory, we’ve never had a health pandemic in recent history. So, for us, it really is a new experience and based on what happens this year, it’s very difficult for us to project because we don’t know what the health situation will be like in 2021 or in 2022.

As I mentioned, in Miami-Dade County, we have over 20 elections a year, because we have 34 municipalities. So, in any given year, we’re constantly hosting elections. For us, it’s a new experience and we will just have to take it election by election amidst this health crisis. And once the health crisis subsides, we’ll have to see if voting patterns change at all and if they do, we will adjust again.