If you live in Hillsborough County and plan on voting by mail for the 2024 primary election, you’ll get your ballot soon.
Around a dozen pallets full of ballots were mailed out Thursday.
The county’s Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer oversaw the transfer of over 150,000 ballots into a truck heading to the post office.
Latimer said that’s in addition to the over 2,500 overseas and military ballots sent out on July 3.
Election officials will keep tabs at each step of the ballot’s journey.
“When those ballots start coming back, we’re keeping count of those ballots also,” Latimer said. “So there’s just a tremendous amount of security that goes into this, and of having that chain of custody for all the ballots.
And if you still haven’t registered to vote for the primary election — you have until Monday, July 22.
And whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or have no party affiliation (NPA), Latimer said everyone can vote in the nonpartisan races like judges and school board members.
“And we also what’s called a universal primary for public defender, so we’re gonna have the public defender chosen at this race,” he said. “We’re gonna have at least two judges at this race, and we’ll see what happens with the school board.”
If no school board candidates get at least a simple majority, which is 50% plus one vote, the top two will move to a runoff in November (if there are more than two candidates).
Hillsborough residents have until August 8 to request a vote-by-mail ballot, and the primary is on August 20.
As of last week, over 70,000 Democrats, over 50,000 Republicans, and over 30,000 NPA voters.
After the ballots hit the truck, Hillsborough County held its first canvassing board meeting for the 2024 primary election with Latimer, County Court Judge Daryl Manning, and County Commissioner Donna Cameron Cepeda.
A public Logic and Accuracy test was conducted on the voting equipment the county is using for this election.
A test that Latimer said state law requires for every election, in every county.
“During this test, we will run test decks through some of our tabulation equipment to confirm the machines are reading every position on the ballot and tabulating accurately,” he said.
County staff scanned pre-filled ballots into random selections of ballot scanners that will be used. The test confirms that scanners are reading every position on the ballot and counting votes accurately.
Latimer says all the equipment was tested before the public accuracy test as well, where officials ran over 40,000 test ballots through vote tabulators.
Now that all testing is complete, the equipment is sealed and kept under camera surveillance until deployed to voting locations.
