Voting by mail is safe and secure, Lee County elections supervisor says

Many voters these days are voting by mail, but President Donald Trump on Tuesday voiced his concerns over the safety of mail-in ballots.

“I think mail-in voting in horrible, it’s corrupt,” the president said. “There’s a lot of dishonesty going along with mail-in voting.”

Lee County Supervisor of Elections Tommy Doyle said that isn’t true. Mail-in voting isn’t corrupt and he’s making sure your vote counts.

The next Election Day in Southwest Florida is the primary on Aug. 18, and the Lee County Elections Office anticipates a large number of people will vote by mail, just like in 2018.

“Last Election Day, 51 percent voted by mail. In fact, it’s going to continue to rise, actually, with what’s going on today,” Doyle said.

“It’s convenient, it’s secure, you have more time to check out the candidates, get informed and we pay the postage back. People are looking for easy ways to vote.”

But Trump isn’t a big fan of the process, even though he admitted that’s how he cast his last ballot.

“You know why I voted? Because I happen to be in the White House and I won’t be able to go to Florida to be able to vote,” he said.

“You look at what they do, where they grab thousands of mail-in ballots and they dump it – I’ll tell you what – and I don’t have to tell you, you can look at the statistics. There’s a lot of dishonesty going on with mail-in voting.”

Doyle said that’s not true.

“I don’t know why he said that … because he votes by mail, so I don’t understand that.”

He said voting by mail has many benefits. In 2012, many people got stuck in long lines, even after polls closed.

“I think once that happened, they took proactive steps. In the 2014 election, they started paying postage back for a vote by mail. There was a big push for vote by mail to decrease the lines at the precinct and that helped a lot.”

The Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections also asked the governor to make early voting sites available for up to 22 days prior to and including Election Day. They also don’t think voters should have assigned precincts.