The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office is making some changes to how we vote ahead of the August primary, with coronavirus concerns looming.
To start, workers are preparing to meet a surge in requests from residents to vote by mail.
“We did order one million extra envelopes because we were worried after seeing in March and how crazy that was,” Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link tells our news partner, WPTV NewsChannel 5.
On Primary Day in March, people requested mail-in ballots past the deadline due to fears about waiting in polling lines amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly 300,000 voters have already signed up for mail-in ballots.
Sartory Link has also asked Gov. Ron DeSantis to expand early voting from two to three weeks, and to allow several voting precincts to share the same polling location.
Register to vote by mail in Palm Beach County in less than 2 minutes at the following link: https://t.co/vxQ2keCPXl pic.twitter.com/TeN3eLkE5V
— Wendy Sartory Link, PBC Supervisor of Elections (@pbcelections) May 8, 2020
“We had 227 of our locations were private polling locations, and we are still in the process of hearing from all of them, as to whether or not they are going to allow us to come back, but at this point we’ve had a lot tell us no,” says Sartory Link.
She adds that the strategy could help to minimize the poll worker shortage that occurred in March, when too many were either sick or were afraid to get sick.
Visit the Palm Beach County Elections website to request a vote-by-mail ballot.