LEE COUNTY, Fla. — Vote-by-mail ballots are starting to roll out in some areas of Southwest Florida, but what happens if your ballot packet is missing a secrecy sleeve.
Lee County Supervisor of Elections, Tommy Doyle, says a secrecy sleeve is essentially a paper that will have some instructions on it and encloses a ballot.
“Like on election day, you have a secrecy sleeve that you put your ballot into and carry it to the tabulator, this is similar to that,” said Doyle. "The secrecy sleeve has nothing on it that relates to the voter anyway, it’s purely generic and it’s just for the voter to put their ballot in, an extra added secrecy that’s all.”
Florida law requires a secrecy sleeve be included in each vote-by-mail ballot packet.
Voters can contact their supervisor of elections if the secrecy sleeve is missing from their ballot packet.
“We use an outside vendor to do our mailings for the vote-by-mail so if the vendor forgot to do it — some supervisors of elections do in-house mailing, if they forgot too, that’s the only reason I can think of,” said Doyle.
But even without the secrecy sleeve, Doyle says vote-by-mail ballots are still valid.
“If we open an envelope up and the ballot is not in a secrecy sleeve, we don’t care, we still pull it out, we lay it out, and have it tabulated,” said Doyle.
What is important to make sure your vote counts is to return the ballot in its designated return envelope and make sure your signature is on the back.
Doyle says voters should request their vote-by-mail ballot early and return it early.
“There’s an oath on the back, attesting that you’re a registered voter, that should be signed because we verify every signature that comes into our office to make sure that the voter is the one sending it back to us,” said Doyle.
Though not required, people are encouraged to fill out the rest of the back of the envelope, including phone number and email.
Doyle says this information helps them contact voters immediately if there are any issues with their signatures.
“If they don’t want anyone to see that, they can put it in another envelope and mail it to us, they can put our envelope, that has their ballot in it, in another envelope to hide that information if they want."
