The
Sarasota County supervisor of elections and staff are committed to the integrity of
the elections process. Your county elections office team works diligently to ensure
that our elections are fair, accurate and secure. Here are just some of the ways that
we work to keep our elections safe:
· The
Florida Division of Elections validates every voter registration application and verifies
the identity of each applicant.
· Our
voter registration database is updated routinely to remove deceased voters and felons,
and our office uses voter registration list maintenance to help identify voters who
may have moved.
· Voters
must be registered to vote in Sarasota County and are asked to present a current and
valid form of photo and signature identification prior to receiving a ballot during
early voting or on election day.
· For
vote-by-mail ballots, the signature on the voter certificate envelope is checked by
our office against the voter’s signature on file.
· Voter
records are updated in real time so that no voter may vote twice in an election. Once
a voter returns a vote-by-mail ballot or checks in during early voting or on election
day to vote, the voter’s record will show that he or she has already voted.
· Our
state-certified voting system is rigorously tested before each election to ensure
that every piece of tabulating equipment is counting votes accurately. We also conduct
a public test of the system prior to each election.
· Sarasota
County uses paper ballots, which means a trail of every vote cast. These ballots are
stored under video surveillance for up to 22 months after an election and can be rescanned
or counted by hand if required.
· Ballots
and voting equipment are secured in controlled-access areas, equipped with 24-hour
video surveillance and alarms, until deployed for voting. During
early voting and on election day, tabulators are in plain sight and secured with seals
that are numbered and tamper resistant.
· Strict
ballot reconciliation procedures are in place during the elections process (for vote-by-mail,
early voting, and election day voting) to compare the number of
persons who voted with
the number of ballots cast.
· We
use a stand-alone (not connected to the Internet) results reporting system and reconcile
precinct-level totals with composite election results to ensure they match.
· Following
each election, we conduct a manual audit of all ballots cast during early voting,
vote-by-mail, and on election day in a randomly selected race and precinct to ensure
the hand count matches the machine count.
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