Counting the votes and comparisons with the election of 2020

[00:00:01] Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike's on Mic, a conversation about politics, government and Jacksonville with 50 year opinion leaders, Mike Hightower, Mike Tolbert and award winning broadcaster and longtime political observer, Mike Miller.

[00:00:17] Welcome to another episode of Mikes on Mic. I'm Mike Miller, along with Mike Hightower in studio with us. And Mike Tolbert is back at his remote location. And we're delighted to have you with us.

[00:00:27] As we tape this episode, the November 5th general election is only two weeks away, but voting by mail and early voting is already well underway.

[00:00:36] In addition to having quite a long ballot, by the way, this election is confronted with multiple changes and restrictions on how and when we vote.

[00:00:44] A further complication, of course, is the horrendous destruction that was caused by hurricanes Hulene and Mildred.

[00:00:50] County supervisors of election have asked for flexibility when it comes to the voting rules.

[00:00:57] And talking about that today, our guest is Jerry Holland, who is our current supervisor of elections.

[00:01:03] Jerry is in his second go round as Duval County supervisor.

[00:01:06] He was first elected to the city council back in 1999, where he served as council president.

[00:01:11] I do remember that swearing in ceremony.

[00:01:14] You were there, Jerry.

[00:01:15] My master of ceremonies.

[00:01:16] Who is your emcee on that? That's right.

[00:01:18] I mean, anyhow, for 25 years, he has served continuously the city of Jacksonville, including property appraiser, and then has returned to the elections office.

[00:01:28] And he is in, as I said, the first term, if you will, of two possible terms.

[00:01:34] And Jerry, welcome to Mike's Out.

[00:01:35] Mike, it's great to have you with us.

[00:01:36] Welcome, Jerry.

[00:01:37] Thank you, all of you, Mike.

[00:01:38] It's good to be here.

[00:01:40] It's not often we bring another person who's not named Mike off the program.

[00:01:44] So feel honored.

[00:01:45] I can only say my parents was going to name me Michael Douglas Holland.

[00:01:49] That's Jesus.

[00:01:50] So I was this close to being a Mike.

[00:01:52] All right, okay.

[00:01:53] That gets you on.

[00:01:54] That gets you on.

[00:01:55] Mr. Tober, kick it off for us, please.

[00:01:57] Yeah, Jerry, before I get into my questions, I want to thank you for your public service.

[00:02:02] And I know that you are a big baseball fan and a coach.

[00:02:06] And a Dodger fan.

[00:02:07] I know that you are a big fan of teamwork.

[00:02:09] Both at the Property Appraiser's office and in your office now, you have a reputation for having built really good teams around you, having good staff and people who are very professional.

[00:02:21] And if you want to open this up by talking about that, what is your philosophy about your staff and people that you hire?

[00:02:27] Definitely the key to your own success is having great staff around you.

[00:02:32] There is no doubt about that.

[00:02:33] And don't ever have the thought that you should not have people smarter than yourself.

[00:02:38] That is a better way to approach it is get people even smarter than yourself.

[00:02:42] Also is I don't micromanage.

[00:02:44] I give people opportunities.

[00:02:46] But on the other hand, the other side I always believe in, if you're an adult and you're not a good worker, there's nothing I can do to make you a good worker.

[00:02:55] It's time to call the crop and get good people in there.

[00:02:58] Because someone who's a poor worker will only pull down the other workers.

[00:03:03] So it's about cultivating a good team, calling out the ones who are not, and give them the opportunity to shine.

[00:03:11] Never put them in a position to fail.

[00:03:13] Never give someone a tougher job than they can handle without the expertise, without the advice, without the education.

[00:03:21] So it's really, it's about communications.

[00:03:23] It's about working with your team.

[00:03:25] And I've had this, I will say this also.

[00:03:27] I've had a lot of great teams that I've worked with in the SOEs in the past as well as property appraiser.

[00:03:33] The team I put together right now on this SOE team, everything is just, it's an A team.

[00:03:40] It's amazing.

[00:03:40] I'm so proud of them.

[00:03:42] But it's really about putting together good people and recognizing what's good talent.

[00:03:46] And also, when you hire someone and you think they're going to be good and they're not, make that separation.

[00:03:51] That's important.

[00:03:52] I've been very fortunate to find some good people that want to work with me.

[00:03:56] Let's talk about the 2024 election by the numbers.

[00:04:00] And Jerry, I've got several questions.

[00:04:02] What are the current voter registration numbers in Duval County by RD and NPA?

[00:04:08] That's number one.

[00:04:09] Number two, have those numbers increased this year?

[00:04:12] And if so, how?

[00:04:14] And finally, if vote by mail and early voting are underway, what are the numbers as of today, two weeks before the general election?

[00:04:21] And how would you describe the current pace of voting before November 5th?

[00:04:26] All right.

[00:04:27] Let's talk first about the voter rolls.

[00:04:29] Here's what's interesting.

[00:04:30] If you look at 2020, in Duval County, there were 660,000 voters.

[00:04:35] Just about six months ago, we were down to 620,000.

[00:04:42] Part of doing your job right as SOE is making sure those on the rolls that are supposed to be there are there.

[00:04:50] And those who have died, moved on, literally moved, those that you call them out also.

[00:04:58] Make sure you do that.

[00:04:59] So we reduced the rolls about 40,000 when we did that.

[00:05:03] And what that did do also was it brought the number of Republicans and Democrats closer.

[00:05:11] At one time, there was about a 40,000 voter difference between Dems being more than Republicans.

[00:05:19] After that, and it was about two to one Democrats and Republicans that had moved and shouldn't have been on the rolls.

[00:05:26] But after doing that, then the margin actually got as close as 10,000 between the Democrats and Republicans.

[00:05:33] Today, it's a little bit more than 11,000.

[00:05:37] There's 247,500 Democrats and 236,500 Republicans.

[00:05:45] Now, when you look at the overall numbers, they haven't increased that much relative to, as you look at rolls,

[00:05:53] what's increased as a number has really been the no party affiliation.

[00:05:58] That has gone up in the last year or so, probably from 120-some thousand to now it's 145,500.

[00:06:08] Then you have other minor parties, about 20,000.

[00:06:11] So we sit today with 650,000 active voters in Duval County, about 10,000 less than we did in 2020.

[00:06:21] That is significant.

[00:06:22] Did you say the NPA, there hasn't been much growth in the Democrat-Republican?

[00:06:27] And we do a lot of voter registration drives in our office.

[00:06:32] We go out to all the schools.

[00:06:35] We go to all the naturalization ceremony.

[00:06:37] A lot of young people, a lot of people in naturalization will go NPA.

[00:06:42] People are not sure about the parties.

[00:06:44] There's a lot of friction in the parties.

[00:06:46] They're not sure where.

[00:06:48] They don't want to align necessarily with a party.

[00:06:51] Now, they'll vote this party or that party at times,

[00:06:55] but there's a lot more people going down the middle of the road saying,

[00:06:58] I'm not going to align with a party.

[00:07:00] I'm going to decide sometimes in November who I want.

[00:07:04] Tell me the demographics of the NPAs.

[00:07:06] Are we talking about the younger people?

[00:07:09] Relatively, yes.

[00:07:10] When you look at...

[00:07:11] 45 to 49, would you say?

[00:07:12] I would say from the 18 to the 35, you'll see a higher percentage of NPAs.

[00:07:19] Because again, they're not necessarily taking on whatever their parents' party was.

[00:07:24] They haven't made a decision, especially in the 20s, of what party they want to be.

[00:07:28] So yes, I see the younger voters gravitating more toward NPA.

[00:07:32] I think that's what we, the three of us, have talked about.

[00:07:35] The shrillness from both parties.

[00:07:37] Why affiliate with either one?

[00:07:39] Still get involved, but why affiliate?

[00:07:42] Yeah, and I think as they get older, sometimes they will make that decision and gravitate to this party.

[00:07:47] This is more lying to.

[00:07:49] Right.

[00:07:50] And so they'll do that.

[00:07:51] And then also they realize too, is there some disadvantages to being NPA?

[00:07:55] Meaning when you look at the primaries,

[00:07:57] often you're not going to be able to decide on who's going to go to November,

[00:08:01] or they may be decided in the primary because it seems to be a closed primary,

[00:08:06] or seemed closed primary, and then the right end drops out,

[00:08:09] so you really never had a chance to vote.

[00:08:11] But as they get older, they do realize maybe I need to align with a party, and they do.

[00:08:15] Do you see NPAs going in the ballot box for the major elections?

[00:08:19] I will say what we typically see is when it comes to the parties and NPAs,

[00:08:25] Republicans have a higher percentage of voting as a party as compared to the other groups.

[00:08:31] NPAs are, they're also not committed as much as the two party candidate voters are.

[00:08:38] So they're the lower turnout of the group as a group.

[00:08:42] But so typically it's the Republicans, Democrats, and then NPAs fall lower when it comes to the turnout.

[00:08:48] Having the state of Florida gone through two hurricanes, polling places have been destroyed.

[00:08:55] Poll workers, as well as voters, are homeless, which has caused an issue.

[00:09:00] Because of the impact of the storm, a supervisor of election association,

[00:09:04] which you have a leadership, asked for 10 modifications from the governor.

[00:09:09] Can you tell us about what those, the extra time, those modifications were?

[00:09:14] From what I understand, and of course Duval was not impacted in any way due to either storm.

[00:09:19] We were very blessed there.

[00:09:21] But for the most part, in talking to my colleagues, they were pleased at what was allowed to be changed.

[00:09:27] And I think we adapted, and they're okay with the adaption.

[00:09:31] I haven't heard any of the SOEs complain or say we need to push harder.

[00:09:36] Typically, what they do is if they're not getting what they want,

[00:09:40] then they want the entire state to get behind them and rally in support.

[00:09:44] But we haven't been called to do that.

[00:09:47] So I felt like the governor and the secretary of state, Cord Byrd,

[00:09:51] listened to what the SOEs wanted and gave them what they felt was that things needed to do.

[00:09:57] And obviously, as you point out, Florida was not hit as badly as the other two counties,

[00:10:03] particularly, and particularly North Carolina, Western North Carolina.

[00:10:07] Have you talked to your colleagues in those areas?

[00:10:10] And what are they doing about this?

[00:10:11] Because with the flooding and all of the other destruction,

[00:10:15] if I'm a typical voter, I'm not going to know what to do.

[00:10:18] I'm not even sure if I can get to my mailbox to put in a mail-in vote.

[00:10:22] What are they doing about that to be able to get a good representation

[00:10:25] of the voting electorate there?

[00:10:27] I'll tell you, I'm real curious because the same thing.

[00:10:30] You always want to know, how did you handle the challenge in case we ever have the challenge?

[00:10:35] Unfortunately, it's during a period of time where we're handling our challenge,

[00:10:37] which is how do we get through these next 14 days and accomplish everything?

[00:10:43] So we haven't been able to really correspond.

[00:10:45] We've been focused on our own counties.

[00:10:47] But I think when it's all said and done,

[00:10:49] we will learn a lot on how you react after such an occasion,

[00:10:53] whether it be a hurricane or any kind of natural disaster and make that happen.

[00:10:58] Just from what I've heard as secondhand information,

[00:11:00] is they're working out plans to how to reach those voters.

[00:11:04] It's so similar to if you remember Katrina and all the voters were displaced.

[00:11:09] New Orleans.

[00:11:10] Exactly.

[00:11:11] And so they're trying to do the same thing from my understanding in North Carolina

[00:11:14] is to reach the displaced voters and trying to give them that opportunity to vote.

[00:11:19] But all the details I haven't been able to get to.

[00:11:21] I leave Thursday afternoon for North Carolina.

[00:11:24] I had a group of us.

[00:11:26] They've already had a group that I hang out with,

[00:11:28] but they're already going into some of those counties.

[00:11:31] Our little town wasn't affected, but 35 miles north or west of us were.

[00:11:36] So we're going to be going up there as they tell us where we can go and how far we can go.

[00:11:41] So I'll be able to share firsthand.

[00:11:43] That'll be interesting.

[00:11:44] But the devastation is everything you've heard.

[00:11:46] Yeah.

[00:11:46] But now we're seeing all this hostility around elections.

[00:11:49] Voting by mail, drop boxes being questioned, as you pointed out,

[00:11:52] and poll workers themselves are being intimidated and threatened.

[00:11:56] Let's go back to when you were first elected SOE 24 years ago.

[00:12:00] Compare the tone of elections back in 2000 compared to the tone in 2024.

[00:12:05] And I'm glad you brought up what is the difference, because I get asked that sometimes.

[00:12:09] Also, my colleague said when you first went into elections in 2005,

[00:12:13] you didn't know what you were getting into.

[00:12:14] You came back and knew what you were getting into.

[00:12:16] They questioned a little sanity there.

[00:12:19] Bev said the same thing.

[00:12:20] My wife said the same thing.

[00:12:22] There's two things of perspective to take away from back then into now.

[00:12:26] One is, and I want to know what voters embraced.

[00:12:28] When we came out of the 2000 election, and I came in 2005,

[00:12:32] we're still the hangover from the Chads and from the punch card system.

[00:12:36] We, after 2000, embraced technology.

[00:12:39] Even many counties even went to all touchscreen voting.

[00:12:42] Yes, they remember that.

[00:12:43] They got rid of that, haven't they?

[00:12:44] Yeah, now they've gotten rid of all touchscreen voting.

[00:12:47] But now they don't embrace technology.

[00:12:51] They want hand-counting ballots.

[00:12:53] They want everything as manual as processed, which I can tell you,

[00:12:57] we do a lot of things right in Florida.

[00:12:58] One is to get our results done as quick as we do.

[00:13:01] We have to report all the early votes and to vote by mail by 7-15,

[00:13:06] where counties in other states don't even start counting them until after the election.

[00:13:11] So we do a lot to get our votes and get it done.

[00:13:14] If we hand-counted, I did an estimate.

[00:13:17] If you hand-counted 500,000 ballots, had 5,000 people,

[00:13:21] counted 29 different races with 92 different selections,

[00:13:25] it would take you 70 days going 24-hour days.

[00:13:28] And can you imagine what it would have been like in Georgia if that judge had not overturned that?

[00:13:33] Were they one of the entire state to be hand-counted?

[00:13:35] We wouldn't know until the next election.

[00:13:38] There was probably a lot of SOEs.

[00:13:40] It was seeing their prayers and glad they were answered.

[00:13:43] Oh, yeah.

[00:13:44] So that's one thing that's changed.

[00:13:45] The other part is what you're talking about, the security of the workers.

[00:13:49] What we've seen after 2020 is the concern is sometimes,

[00:13:52] I've always said, I've never had a winning candidate come into me and say,

[00:13:56] Jerry, there had to be fraud.

[00:13:58] There's no way I could have won.

[00:14:00] You need to do a recount.

[00:14:02] There's fraud.

[00:14:03] But no matter what party, I've had many losing candidates come in and look for someone else to blame.

[00:14:08] And the easy blame is the elections office.

[00:14:12] We must have made the mistake.

[00:14:13] The poll workers must have made the mistake.

[00:14:15] Somebody like that.

[00:14:16] Keep pulling all of these ballots out from underneath tables.

[00:14:19] Yeah, seriously.

[00:14:19] But, and don't get me wrong, I fault election officials for not being transparent.

[00:14:25] Some of that, they should have been, here's what this is, let me explain.

[00:14:28] Not, we're busy, we can't answer questions, or let's cover the windows.

[00:14:32] I want to protect my workers and I don't want you to watch what I'm doing.

[00:14:36] Not good.

[00:14:36] But from a standpoint of that security, that's where, nowadays, of course, elections are now considered critical infrastructure for the federal government.

[00:14:45] So we fall under so many guidelines and protections.

[00:14:48] We, constant communication, FBI, CISO, Cyber Infrastructure Security Agency, Homeland Security, the state's own Integrity Elections Group, all those now because of threats.

[00:15:02] So far, what we believe is our threats are not during the election.

[00:15:06] Because people don't know the outcome.

[00:15:09] People don't know how close it is.

[00:15:10] People don't know who to blame yet.

[00:15:12] Or should they blame someone?

[00:15:14] Both sides are, until the elections start reporting, both sides are thinking they're winning.

[00:15:19] So they're not blaming anybody.

[00:15:21] But after the election is the security.

[00:15:23] And most of it, it's not, the poll workers' work is done.

[00:15:26] But from the elections office, that's where my staff's securing them.

[00:15:30] We've had protocols totally changed where we've now come in and hardened the building, protective glass you can't break out, two layers of fencing to get to the building, additional cameras, mag lots, who can go where.

[00:15:45] We also now, all mail has to be opened in a sealed room and sealed so that it, expecting there could be some kind of contaminant in an envelope to get back at election workers.

[00:15:56] So all that is now what we work in, the environment we work in.

[00:16:00] But we don't see necessarily happening during Election Day.

[00:16:04] Because, again, it's no one to blame yet in this scenario.

[00:16:08] Is it tough to get people to volunteer to work because of them hearing about threats against poll workers and all of the other things that have happened outside of Jacksonville, by the way, that has not really happened here?

[00:16:20] Yeah, that was going to be.

[00:16:21] I will say we have lost poll workers concerned about security.

[00:16:24] We do training for that, the run, hide, fight kind of situation scenarios, and we do that and tell them, listen, if you're in a situation, you don't have to protect the polling location.

[00:16:35] Get out.

[00:16:36] We'll find a way to reconstruct the election.

[00:16:39] But from a standpoint, yeah, it is tough on that situation.

[00:16:44] And we deal with, we're all in that situation when I say seniors, but we deal with a lot of poll workers that are seniors.

[00:16:49] Yeah, and they're the most successful to do poll workers.

[00:16:51] So they get concerned.

[00:16:53] It's already a situation where a lot of times poll workers have to, they go to work and it's dark when you start the polling.

[00:17:00] You go home when it's dark.

[00:17:01] You may go to neighborhoods you're not sure of.

[00:17:04] And so it's already a security situation.

[00:17:07] So it is something we have to do.

[00:17:09] But we've been fortunate.

[00:17:10] We've recruited a lot of poll workers.

[00:17:13] We also, one of my goals were, is the state law says in any polling location, you cannot have all of the same party.

[00:17:21] You must have one of something different.

[00:17:23] It can be an MPA, minor party.

[00:17:25] But for transparency, I wanted both major parties represented in every polling location.

[00:17:31] And it was interesting.

[00:17:32] I tried to get the state to do this.

[00:17:34] I said, you should have, you should have both major parties represented in every polling location.

[00:17:39] I could not get a single county supervisor to support that.

[00:17:44] I'm kidding.

[00:17:44] No.

[00:17:45] No.

[00:17:45] And we set the bar.

[00:17:47] Now, some of them said, we do that, but I don't want to put that burden on others and that.

[00:17:52] But we put a minimum of two Democrats and two Republicans in every polling location.

[00:17:56] We tried to do three and three at a minimum for the reason of this.

[00:18:01] One side or the other can't say, we weren't even represented and I know they were cheating there.

[00:18:05] You've got eyes on the ground.

[00:18:07] You're there.

[00:18:08] You're working it.

[00:18:08] I don't have that problem afterwards of someone blaming the other parties.

[00:18:12] But we've been fortunate.

[00:18:14] We've gotten more Republicans.

[00:18:15] We've got a balance about almost 950 Democrats, about 500 Republicans and the rest are MPAs, but a total for about 1,800 poll workers.

[00:18:26] I'm just going to say, having been here since 1957, when you would go to the polls, a lot of these poll workers, that was, they did that year after year.

[00:18:35] It was a family affair.

[00:18:36] They knew the people coming in, the cookies, the whole bit.

[00:18:39] Do you still see that returning, those people coming back year after year?

[00:18:43] I would say probably 50% of ours are repeat when they come back.

[00:18:48] And they have done it for generations in a sense.

[00:18:50] They have children there and grandchildren.

[00:18:52] We do limit the number of family members in one polling location.

[00:18:55] Don't want the total home cooking here, but we do encourage them coming back.

[00:19:00] But because there are elder voters that are poll workers, they literally die off.

[00:19:06] And so we're constantly recruiting a different generation as we go forward.

[00:19:09] Yeah.

[00:19:10] Jerry, I would assume as you plan for this election and every election, you have to do the worst case scenario exercise and be ready for whatever comes.

[00:19:22] What is what in your mind is the worst case that can happen on the 2024 election that you might have to deal with?

[00:19:29] We try to plan for every scenario.

[00:19:32] That's what you need to plan for the worst and pray for the best.

[00:19:35] From a standpoint, an outside interference to the election, meaning, and we even got warnings, Iran being attacking or doing something like that.

[00:19:45] But something attacking infrastructure during the period of time of the election would be the worst case scenario, we think,

[00:19:53] is if we get not necessarily a 9-11, but something as serious as an attack on infrastructure on Election Day.

[00:20:01] Other things that we look at from a standpoint, there's some things we can't control.

[00:20:06] Obviously, bad weather.

[00:20:07] We all we hope the hurricanes go around us during the election cycle.

[00:20:11] We're glad when they're early and glad when they come afterwards.

[00:20:14] But those are things we can't control.

[00:20:16] But typically, the other side is sometimes it's now the thought is AI, artificial intelligence.

[00:20:22] How will it impact us?

[00:20:25] Misinformation from AI.

[00:20:27] It's amazing now.

[00:20:28] And there's there's now you can get on YouTube after a college football game.

[00:20:33] They will do AI with the coach giving the report that would never be reported.

[00:20:39] But you can take from four words of your language as you speak them and totally reproduce you saying whatever they want to say.

[00:20:48] And so AI is a concern.

[00:20:50] As we look at that, those are the three things that top on our radar screen.

[00:20:56] Do you anticipate any problems with the polls?

[00:20:59] Have you been given any kind of I can't get prior warning?

[00:21:03] Other than we've heard several times from Homeland Security and FBI of warning of outside interference from another country.

[00:21:10] But not knowing that can happen anywhere in the United States.

[00:21:13] Despite the bragging about the integrity of the 2020 election, some of it still is still there.

[00:21:19] And saying that Florida set the example for us to say.

[00:21:22] Governor Sanchez has imposed our understanding.

[00:21:26] Numerous restrictions on many of the state supervisors have criticized in an effort to limit voting by racial minorities and others.

[00:21:35] Can you help us understand what are some of those issues that have been brought up or that have been a concern by folks within your association?

[00:21:44] And are you as our SOE, are you having problems?

[00:21:49] Yeah, part of it is this.

[00:21:51] And it becomes political.

[00:21:53] Obviously, we're talking politics.

[00:21:55] If we had a Democratic governor in there, then the Republicans would be saying you're doing something to restrict us.

[00:22:01] And so it's normal to say, I will say, of the things that have changed in Senate Bill 90 was one.

[00:22:08] The strongest thing changed in there was after every federal election, your request for vote by mail goes away and you must request again for the next cycle.

[00:22:18] Which means after this 2024 election on January 1st, 2025, I will have zero requests for vote by mail ballots.

[00:22:26] It starts all over again.

[00:22:27] And you used to be almost put in there and say, I'm a permanent lifetime vote by mail keeps sending it to me.

[00:22:33] What that has done, several things have done it, but it's reduced the amount of vote by mail voters.

[00:22:38] In 2020, we had over 150,000 requests, 120,000 people voted by mail in 2020.

[00:22:46] We've had 80,000 requests.

[00:22:49] And right now, somewhere around 27,000 people voting by mail in this election.

[00:22:54] You could say, was that because of COVID?

[00:22:56] More people voted.

[00:22:57] Was that because of the change?

[00:22:59] We've notified those who voted before.

[00:23:02] Do you want to sign up again?

[00:23:03] Was that due to political messaging of don't vote by mail?

[00:23:07] You can't trust it from one side versus the other.

[00:23:10] At one time, Republicans owned the outcome of vote by mail, meaning more Republicans voted.

[00:23:15] Now it's Democrats that lead that.

[00:23:17] So it's hard to tell sometimes what are the effects from the legislation and what are the effects also from the political politics and the political people in it saying don't do something or do something else.

[00:23:29] If there was in a perfect jury's world, I would say one thing, even though we did the amendment that restored rights of felons, there is no clearinghouse, which makes it difficult if someone's done their time, did their restitution, and now want their rights back.

[00:23:47] They still have to go to every county that there was possible a felony, get that, clear that.

[00:23:52] And then when they register is that we may give them a voter information card, but it says on the back, even though we gave you this card, it doesn't mean you're eligible.

[00:24:01] You must know if you're eligible.

[00:24:02] And that's got people going, I'm not sure I'm not going to register.

[00:24:06] So there ought to be a clearinghouse for that group of citizens who want to be voters.

[00:24:10] But personally, the criticism was this.

[00:24:13] Governor, you said it was a gold standard.

[00:24:15] Why'd you do more?

[00:24:16] And my mind is, listen, more isn't always worse.

[00:24:20] There's a gold standard and, hey, there's a platinum standard.

[00:24:22] So we'll go for the platinum standard.

[00:24:25] But I haven't seen anyone really denied the ability to vote.

[00:24:30] We hear about voter IDs all the time.

[00:24:32] In the state of Florida, you do not have to have an ID to vote.

[00:24:35] It will be provisional, but your signature matches on that envelope.

[00:24:39] It counts.

[00:24:40] Or you have until 5 o'clock Thursday to bring it in.

[00:24:43] It counts.

[00:24:44] Now, which people don't talk about, but now you're vote by mail.

[00:24:47] If your signature doesn't match, we're to notify you.

[00:24:51] You can do a cure to that.

[00:24:54] Or you can come in by Thursday at 5 o'clock and bring your ID.

[00:24:58] So as much as we hear about some of the criticism, there's been laws changed.

[00:25:02] And that does give you that second chance if you lost your ID or your ballot didn't match, your signature didn't match.

[00:25:10] So we have a lot of things in there to give you every opportunity to make sure your vote counts.

[00:25:15] So I'm not big on criticizing what was changed because I just haven't seen a negative impact.

[00:25:22] Most of my, and I'll put it on my colleagues, but sometimes the ones complaining the most are in Democratic counties.

[00:25:27] And I think it goes with the politics to complain about it.

[00:25:30] So to restate since 2000, when we were all involved in 2000, we've come a long way since 2000.

[00:25:38] And I think many improvements.

[00:25:39] The evolution from the punch card to the touchscreens, no, we don't want that.

[00:25:43] Every vote is cast on a paper ballot in Florida.

[00:25:46] We can reconstruct the election afterwards.

[00:25:49] We capture the vote four different ways.

[00:25:52] The ballots themselves, we have a thumb drive that captures it.

[00:25:55] We also print the result tapes at the end of the night.

[00:25:59] So they're posted on the precinct, plus put in a sealed bag.

[00:26:02] And then we modem in the results in an encrypted virtual private network.

[00:26:07] So how we capture the results are important because that adds to security of the election also.

[00:26:13] And it also underscores integrity in the process.

[00:26:16] It does.

[00:26:17] And also Florida does a lot of things right in that also laws that were changed is we have a post-election audit, which everybody wants to hand count.

[00:26:26] But after the election's over, the canvassing judge will randomly select a race and precincts.

[00:26:32] And then we'll pull those ballots and we'll hand count them in front of the public, in front of the media.

[00:26:37] And since doing that, they've been 100 percent accurate.

[00:26:40] So that's things we do try to say, how can we keep adding to the integrity of the process?

[00:26:46] Right.

[00:26:46] I want to go back.

[00:26:47] One last thing.

[00:26:48] I want to go back to drop boxes.

[00:26:50] Yes.

[00:26:50] How many more, how many or how fewer drop boxes do you have in 2024 than you had in 2020?

[00:26:57] Actually, we have more now because we have more early voting sites.

[00:27:01] We now went from 19 to 24 early voting sites.

[00:27:05] And the requirement now is they must be in an early voting site.

[00:27:08] So there were some other locations.

[00:27:11] They had, I think, four other locations.

[00:27:13] But now we've exceeded that by five, by having five more early voting sites.

[00:27:18] Yes.

[00:27:18] And now the difference is they were unmanned back when they first did them.

[00:27:23] There was just one sitting at the stadium and you just come by and drop them in anytime

[00:27:27] you wanted to.

[00:27:28] And then it's unmanned.

[00:27:30] One thing I tell people, Mike, is this, is there's a drop box at the end of everybody's

[00:27:35] driveway.

[00:27:36] We pay for the postage coming back.

[00:27:38] Yeah.

[00:27:38] You don't have to go somewhere and drop it.

[00:27:41] You can just walk to the end of the driveway and it'll come back to us.

[00:27:44] If you've noticed how much it costs to mail anything, I am very appreciative of that.

[00:27:49] And that started back, and I give John Stafford the credit.

[00:27:52] He went to the council back there in 2000.

[00:27:55] It's not mandated in the state.

[00:27:57] Not all counties do it.

[00:27:58] But back then he got Duval as one of the first counties to pay for the postage coming back

[00:28:03] in.

[00:28:04] What's your prediction for turnout, Jerry?

[00:28:05] And how would that compare to 2020?

[00:28:07] Good question.

[00:28:08] And I first want to say, Mike, you asked this question earlier about how we've done

[00:28:13] so far early voting, just to give you that and then brought it into the end of turnout.

[00:28:18] So far, we've had 28,000 people return their ballots out of the 80,000, definitely on the

[00:28:25] low side.

[00:28:26] Early vote yesterday was about 25,000 combined.

[00:28:29] We had now about another 14,000 vote in the day.

[00:28:33] We're going from seven in the morning, seven at night.

[00:28:35] So we've had 68,000 people vote.

[00:28:38] We're at 10% turnout.

[00:28:40] Now, if it was a primary, we'd be halfway there because usually we get 90% turnout.

[00:28:44] Where I think our turnout, I still think several reasons.

[00:28:48] One is this is an election that is contentious and people on both sides want to express their

[00:28:54] voice.

[00:28:54] That will bring people to the polls.

[00:28:56] The other side, because our voter rolls are very accurate and clean, I think that will help

[00:29:02] our turnout percentage because what hurts you is if you've got 30,000 or 40,000 voters

[00:29:07] that are no longer living here, it's going to count against your numbers as you look at

[00:29:12] your percentage.

[00:29:13] I think we'll, we had 73% in 2020.

[00:29:16] I think we'll be somewhere else, 77%.

[00:29:19] And part of that is because of the, again, the cleaning up the voter rolls, but also because

[00:29:24] of the race.

[00:29:25] So I think we'll have a good overall.

[00:29:27] But the pressure is this guys, and you said it a little bit earlier, it's a long ballot.

[00:29:32] It's 17 inches, got the six state amendments on it front and back.

[00:29:37] And in Atlantic beach, they've got one extra page because they had to do some more amendments

[00:29:41] of their own.

[00:29:41] And the point is, if you don't get your sample ballot, fill it out and bring it with you,

[00:29:46] it takes longer.

[00:29:48] And if I can't, that's why I expanded early voting.

[00:29:51] If I can't get at least 55% of our voters to vote prior to election day, because we had

[00:29:57] to reduce polling locations due to a lawsuit.

[00:29:59] It was under the equal protection clause that basically said we have 14 council districts.

[00:30:04] Some had as many as 19 polling locations.

[00:30:06] Some as few as nine.

[00:30:07] There was not equal access to voting.

[00:30:09] Perfect world put 19 everywhere, but you can't find polling locations.

[00:30:13] So we're down from 186 to 160, which means if the voters wait till election day, there

[00:30:21] will be some two and three hour long lines.

[00:30:23] I'm pushing hard that get out and vote early.

[00:30:26] Jerry, thank you so much for being with us.

[00:30:28] And thank you for almost 25 years of public service.

[00:30:31] We appreciate it.

[00:30:32] Remember to vote.

[00:30:33] Yeah.

[00:30:33] That's the most important thing.

[00:30:35] Either by mailing in your ballot, go early voting, which is going on right now, or please

[00:30:39] visit your polling site on November the 5th.

[00:30:42] And once again, thank you for joining us.

[00:30:44] Of course, Mike's on Mike is brought to you by the Jacksonville History Center and the

[00:30:47] fine folks that Alan Bliss works with.

[00:30:49] And there are many fine donors who keep the lights on and the cameras rolling.

[00:30:53] We'll see you all again next week.

[00:30:55] Take care.

[00:30:56] Mike's on Mike with Mike Tolbert, Mike Hightower, and Mike Miller can be found on your favorite

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[00:31:05] Visit the website at Mike's on Mike dot com.

[00:31:08] Join us next time for more conversation with Mike's on Mike.

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