Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Early Voting Starts 10/19
Transcript
- Rick Outzen: I'm Rick Alston. This is Rick's blog live, elections, elections, elections. You're going to hear a lot about it from us at N Weekly and on the blog, and from our supervisor of elections. We got with the got him with us today, Robert Bender. Robert, thank you for joining us. We are Robert Bender: Thank you. Rick Outzen: we're on the vote by mail is going strong. had a little hiccup with the post office, but that is the post office is coming back online after the hurricane. Early voting starts next week on the 19th through the 31st, 8 to 6. walk through early voting, how that process works for everyone. Robert Bender: so one is that you can go to any one of the ten sites that you want to. So again, open thirteen days, eight AM to six PM every day. So flexible for your schedule. usually even later in that afternoon after five thirty, you usually see things die down. So even if there's a line earlier in the day, come come late in the day and and just like election day, if you're in line at six PM, you'll get you'll get to vote. So any one of those ten, we've got scattered around the country around the county. And as I say, if if you're headed out of town and realize, I wanna vote, stop by, see at the century courthouse, they would love to see you. you know, but so anyway, it's it's one of those things that that's offered and and so we expand from the eight mandatory days to the thirteen days leading up to the election, eight AM to six PM. And we Rick Outzen: You know, we've got all the the the possible locations, all the no no the official locations available. of course the scamio votes dot gov as well as any weekly. We've been been been putting those day those locations out. and it it is it's important to remember and I think I'm glad that you brought it up, is that you can vote anywhere. So if you're working downtown but you live in Beulah, you can still you can go vote over at your office or go to the downtown library. You know, there there's so many different convenient spots to do. Now the other thing that that also can help you in this process is y you can also get a copy of your ballot before you show up at the poll rate. Robert Bender: So we did mail about a hundred and twenty thousand sample ballots ahead of the storm. twenty thousand would have been put in the mail on on Thursday. I said, no, let's wait until after the storm. I didn't want them in in post office post you know, in in in in post office Rick Outzen: Where something could've happened to it. Robert Bender: or or in the mailboxes as the storm's blowing, wind in there, rain in there. And so we s we mailed the last twenty thousand yesterday. and so that should get to everybody. You you your sample ballot's available online at iscambiavoats.gov and and it'll be just like you have it. You can print it out, mark it up however you you want to take it that in with you. But yes, so the the we use ballot on demand technology. So when you check in, just like you would on election day, instead of printing a little receipt for you to take to the to the ballot issuer to get your ballot at your precinct, it just prints your ballot right there. So just as if it it makes sure that you get the right ballot, everything like that. you go vote it, put it in the tabulator just like you would on election day. The the ballot's tabulated right then and and you voted. Rick Outzen: Right, and you get to see that you know the machine shows that it got red. Correct, which all those things all that security is involved in it. the you know when when you look at it, I think the ability to be able to see your ballot ahead of time. What we're gonna do it in weekly is we will be doing our election guide on the twenty second, and we'll have a copy of of the ballot i in there also and and help you prepare to it because you need to do the homework. But there are a lot how many pages is the ballot this year? Robert Bender: Front and back, 17 inch. and and so we have that first column is gonna be all your your federal and state offices. so the US Senate, Congress, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and then the cabinet. So CFO, agriculture, and and attorney general will be in that first column. Second columns where you'll have your your House of Representatives for for house districts one or two, and then any local races that you may have, like a county commission or an EC Way race. Then we go into retention of judges. So we have one Supreme Court justice and then three first DCA judges. and then you'll see your City of Pensacola races there. and then amendment one is all on the front. Now amendment one will float. It is a two-page ballot, so we have it in two places on the front, two pages on the back, both vote both sides of page. so four places you should you can see it. The ballot issuer should tell you to vote both sides. the equipment operator when you go to to turn in the ballot will say, Hey, did you remember to vote both sides? so you should hear it twice, read it four times, but on the back it's uniform, amendment two, amendment three takes its own column up and then the county referendum on local option sales tax is the end of the ballot. Rick Outzen: You know, when you go in and and you can go to your website, and I would recommend people doing this, is you can actually look at the different candidates that are in the race. You can look at their finances. You can see how much money they've raised, who's donated money to them, you can see how they've spent their money. there's a lot of information that's available for all the candidates to use. Some of them put big long profiles, by biographical information, others will list websites and other things, but you can look at their finances, which I we've always found to be fascinating. So that there's a lot of information that's available on the Supervisor Elections website. Now Robert, when when someone goes to vote, and this will apply to the general and we'll we'll do another show before the general election, but what what do you need to bring with you when you go to vote? Robert Bender: So the important thing is I want voters to understand you shouldn't expect to have a different experience than you've had before. You don't need to bring your birth certificate. We've already validated your citizenship status. And I think that's why we're also not gonna see agencies that are polling locations across Florida, not just Escambia County, but across Florida, because Florida has already validated the the the voters on their roles as as citizens. so there's no reason for them to show up when when they aren't on the rolls to begin with. so that's where I really hit. Don't expect a different experience. that's a But but you need to bring a photo and signature ID. We had a number of people that were voting in the primary that said we're so glad you guys are finally doing photo and signature ID. For 30 years now, Florida has required photo and signature ID. The other thing is that although the the list is is paring down, that's not happening until 2027. So the same photo ID that you used in 2024, you could use again this year as long as it's still valid. so it'd be things like military ID. Now they don't have a signature on there so you may need to show a credit card that has your signature on it or your social security card or something like that. but your passport, your driver's license, identification card issued by the HDS MV. you can do benefits card. You can still do a student ID, neighborhood association, or retirement center ID, but but those last three student ID, retirement, and HOA will be going away in 2027. Okay. military ID, benefits cards, things like that, concealed carry, and then federal, state government employee ID ID. Rick Outzen: All right, before we go we're we're wrapping up this segment pretty quick, is the the other thing is brag about your accuracy rate in and Robert Bender: Well again, so we have an independent automated system that we run all the ballots through and we compare that result to the vote of the tabulated one. every year that we've done it, over 99.99%. the state allows for a point five percent variance and of course we're well well within that less than point one percent. and usually the difference is people haven't filled in the ovals properly. So one system will read it as an under vote, one system will read it, we'll see that marking on the peripheral of the oval and and count it as a vote for someone. And so and it just shows that the the votes that are re the the results that we're releasing are are accurate. And we're doing that in lieu of doing that hand count of one one race from two precincts. We're looking at every race on every ballot, drilling down to early vote, vote by mail, election day. So we're not just seeing that Rick had a hundred votes. We're seeing where those hundred votes came from by precinct and type of vote. Drill down as far as we can to make sure that that all those are correct. Well great. So but yes, it's it's a gr I I listen, having been on both sides of it, I think it just shows how accurate our elections are. And so Rob Rick Outzen: Thank you. Thank you for coming on and doing it. We'll go ahead and take a break. We'll be right back.