Nearly 9 million Floridians have voted already, no issues at polls

Florida’s Secretary of State is announcing that the first part of Election Day voting has gone smoothly, and is downplaying concerns that anomalies could affect electoral participation or the aftermath if a controversial amendment clears the 60% threshold to pass.

“As of yesterday, 8.3 million Floridians have cast ballots by early voting and vote-by-mail. As of just a few minutes ago, over 560,000 have already voted this morning,” said Cord Byrd Tuesday in Tallahassee.

Byrd expressed confidence that election interference and other potential anomalies would not happen in Florida.

“we have federal law enforcement on site here in the building. We are in contact with a lot of our Supervisors of Elections, our 67 Sheriffs. We have a cyber security team in place,” Byrd said. So we are prepared for any type of election interference, but so far, early voting and vote-by-mail went very well and we don’t anticipate any issues on Election Day.”

Byrd also addressed federal election observers, clarifying that Florida law prohibits them from entering polling places.

“They’re certainly allowed to come down and observe from outside, just like anybody else can. It’s going into the polling location itself that is the prohibition under Florida law,” Byrd said.

“We’re running the elections. We’re very strict on who can enter a polling place. I think that’s for the security of the voters and for the individuals who are the poll workers themselves, and so we want to make sure that there’s an unencumbered, unfettered ability for everyone to vote.”

Byrd also said there had been “no conversations” about not certifying Amendment 4, a high-profile measure that would remove state restrictions on abortion.

“I cannot think of a scenario where that would play out,” he said, though the Office of Election Crimes and Security suggested that petition fraud got the initiative on the ballot last month.