Early Voting and Hurricanes - Hillsborough SOE Craig Latimer

Early voting begins Monday (21) in most Tampa Bay area counties. Some voters, and some polling places, are relocated because of the impact of hurricanes Helene and Milton. Gordon Byrd speaks with Hillsborough elections supervisor Craig Latimer. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gordon Bird beyond the news. Early voting getting underway for
the twenty twenty four general election in Florida in most
of Florida on Monday and later in a few other counties.
In Hillsboro County, they're one of the counties affected by
Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and that has caused some dislocations
and that may change the way some people need to vote.

(00:22):
We have Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections, Craig Latimer on the
line to explain what voters need to know as we
get into this election season. Supervisor Latimer, welcome, thank you,
good to be here. Well now, of course, early voting
is starting up on the twenty first, and we'll go
over that in just a moment. I also want to

(00:42):
make sure that people who are relocated dislocated, if they
are are temporarily homeless, or have had to move to
another location. Perhaps some polling places have had to move
to other locations because of our two hurricanes, which is
certainly a challenge that we haven't had before in modern times.

(01:05):
What's going on in Hillsboro County? What do voters need
to know if they're dealing with the aftermath of these hurricanes?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, so a couple of things. If you have been
dislocated and had to relocate and you're out of county
or out of state, you can call our office eight
one three seven four four fifty nine hundred so we
can talk with you about how we can get a
vote by mail ballot set to whatever address you're at.
You'll still have to furnish us some personal identifying information,

(01:34):
but we can certainly make that happen. Early voting, as
you said, starts to twenty first. If you're still here,
you can go to any early vote site. We have
twenty seven early vote sites in the county. You can
go to any early vote site and we'll produce your
specific ballot on demand for you at that early vote site.
So I just encourage people to take advantage of that.

(01:55):
If you have any questions about you know, your status,
or anything else, call our office US eight one three
seven four four fifty nine hundred, or call your Supervisor
of Elections office if you're not in Hillsboro.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Now that being the case, if are there any changes
to any polling locations in Hillsboro on election day because
of the hurricanes? Are there locations you can't use and
you're having to move someplace else.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
So we actually have an early vote site that we
had to relocate. We are not going to be in
the West Tampa Library. We have moved that to the
David M. Barksdale Center at eighteen oh one North Lincoln Avenue,
which is right behind McFarland Park. It's on the west
side of McFarland Park there. And yes, we've lost five
election day sites that we've had to relocate to nearby

(02:43):
polling sites. And all this information is on our website
vote Hillsborg dot gov. We've got a hurricane page that
lists the changes and we're just keeping it up to
date as we go every day.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Now, something that doesn't always occur to people to bring
up up there are thousands of people who have had
impacts to their homes, to their persons, to their property
because of these two hurricanes. Do you have staffers who
are trying to deal with these issues as well, and

(03:17):
certainly we wish them the best.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yes, thank you. We do know that. You know, we've
got people that's still out of power, believe it or not,
So that's occurred.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
So it's a challenge that everybody's facing and we're all
getting through it. Any other information kind of sum up generally,
if you're voting early, what you need to bring and
what hours that the early voting sites will be open.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Early voting I'll run October twenty first through November three,
seven am to seven pm, fourteen straight days. Bring one
of the acceptable forms of photo and signature ID, the
easiest one of your driver's license or Florida ID card.
There's a list of the acceptable forms on my website,
and certainly go there. If you forget to bring your

(04:03):
identification with you, or you may have lost your identification
in the storm, you can still come vote. You're going
to vote what's called a provisional ballot. You have to
sign that envelope and we're going to compare the signature
on that envelope against the signature we have on file,
and the Canvassine Board will make the ultimate determination on
whether that's accepted or rejected.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
All right, very good information to have, and we certainly
hope that everybody. We know that there's a lot on
everybody's mind with the hurricanes and their aftermath and dealing
with all of that. We certainly hope that people are
able to take just a moment or however, long it
takes to participate in the continued governance of our republic,

(04:45):
and we appreciate your role in that. Hillsborough Supervisor of
Elections Craig Latimer, thank you very much for joining us
on beyond the news.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Thank you