JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Early voting in Jacksonville and the rest of Duval County has run smoothly overall, election officials say, but some voters have complained that the touch screens on ExpressVote devices are slow to respond or pick the wrong choice.
Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland said close to 45,000 county voters had already cast ballots early. His office has received at least one complaint about a hard-to-use touchpad, and he asked anyone who runs into trouble to tell a poll worker right away so the equipment can be checked.
Holland said the devices respond better to a stylus, much like a tablet. If a machine has no stylus, voters can move to one that does. If a mistake shows up, a voter can ask for a fresh ballot and use another device.
The ExpressVote does not count votes. Florida requires paper ballots, and the device simply marks a voter’s choices and prints them on a ballot that the voter then reviews and submits. County election supervisors have said very sensitive screens can read a graze from a finger or a long fingernail as a touch, selecting the option just above or below the intended one.
Florida Division of Elections figures put the statewide early vote above 552,000 through Oct. 22. Mail voting is running far ahead of that, with upward of 1.1 million ballots already back. The county mailed more than 630,000 sample ballots, and residents who did not get one can download it from the elections office website.
Holland said some residents have called to say a sample ballot never arrived, or that one person in a household missed theirs while everyone else received one. He pointed to delivery problems with the mail as the likely cause and said a downloaded sample works just as well for planning choices before heading to the polls.
Early voting began statewide on Oct. 24 under the state calendar, though Duval and several other counties chose to open sites earlier, giving residents more days to vote before the Nov. 3 general election.
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