Voters in Donald Trump‘s home county of Palm Beach, Florida have reported problems requesting paper ballots, as the county experiences high turnout for early voting.
Palm Beach opened early voting on Monday, and as of Wednesday morning, 51,408 people had already cast their ballot. An additional 135,474 people had voted by mail, according to Florida’s Division of Elections.
There are 899,301 active voters in Palm Beach Counties.
Speaking to WPTV, voter Hallie Rider said the way polling booths are organized makes it difficult to fill in a paper ballot by hand. Most booths contain an ExpressVote machine, a ballot marking device which uses a touch screen, but in the end prints a paper ballot.
An early voting door sign. Voters have reported problems requesting paper ballots in Donald Trump’s home county of Palm Beach, Florida.
Daniel Hanscom/Getty Images
“It was very difficult to cast a paper ballot,” Rider said. “They had 22 booths, 20 of them were devoted to electronic voting,” she said. “Only two booths were devoted to paper ballots.”
She said that long lines formed for the booths where voters could fill in a paper ballot by hand.
“They [other voters] just gave up,” Rider said. “They were like being led to the slaughter, lambs. I mean they just caved in and voted electronically,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a Supervisor of Elections’ job to minimize paper ballots.”
Although ExpressVote machines use a touch screen, at the end of the voting process they print out a paper ballot which the voter submits.
Others took to social media reporting similar problems. User Lori Saxon wrote on Facebook that election workers were encouraging voters to use ExpressVote machines.
“I just early voted in Palm Beach County & requested a paper ballot,” Saxon wrote. “The workers were pushing the machines & said it would take 2 hours for paper ballots & we should use the machines.”
She added: “I waited only 15 mins for a paper ballot – not 2 hours.”
Another user, Julie Poos, also expressed her preference for a paper ballot, writing on Facebook: “In Palm Beach County they won’t give you a choice of a paper ballot upon check in You MUST Ask … So please Ask for your Paper Ballot. The express machines are the last option not the first to use to enter your vote!”
A user on X, @MossburgMatt posted a video on Monday showing long lines of people waiting to cast their vote, writing “Early voting in Palm Beach County … Crazy!”
Trump’s former lawyer (now disbarred) Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who now resides in Palm Beach, made a YouTube video in which he appeared confused about when early voting started in Palm Beach.
“I thought voting here started on the 20th or something like that. But they actually only have a few days of early voting, they’re actually civilized here, and uh so I can’t vote till next week,” he said yesterday on his YouTube channel. This was incorrect, early voting in Palm Beach opened on Monday October 21 and will close on November 3.
There are dozens of polling locations and users can check the wait times online.
During the 2020 election, Trump, promoted conspiracy theories that voting machines were not trustworthy, and were used by Democrats to rig the election. He has not substantiated this claim with conclusive evidence.
Fox News later had to pay Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine company, a record $787.5 million settlement after admitting its anchors knowingly endorsed and promoted Trump’s false line that machines were switching votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
A preference for paper ballots has since become a key political issue for Republicans.
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link explained how ExpressVote machines work to WPTV, in an attempt to reassure voters.
“Florida is a paper ballot state,” Sartory Link said. “Everybody who is casting a vote in Florida, it doesn’t matter what county they’re in, they’re going to do that on a paper ballot.”
“It’s a ballot marking device that uses a touch screen. So, you go and you’re going to touch the races that you want and at the end, it’s going to say these are the race you voted for,” she said. “At the end it says, if you’re satisfied with these, you punch the print button. When you push the print button, it prints out a paper ballot.”
But Rider said she still would prefer to fill out her own paper ballot. “”I don’t trust that but that’s just me,” she said.
Newsweek has contacted the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections via email for comment.
