Few early voting and absentee ballot problems on Treasure Coast

Lisa Worden and her husband Alex Olsen found absentee voting at the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections Office in Fort Pierce Monday to be a piece of cake.

 

"We spent all morning researching the amendments and felt this was something we had to do," said Worden.

 

Olsen, who became a US citizen after the last presidential election, was a bit apprehensive.

 

"Being on the road, I saw the lines all over the country and I was dreading it a little bit.  No I can actually say when they call me at home now that the vote is in," Olson said laughing.

 

Shay Kelly of Fort Pierce is keeping the sample ballot from her first election as a voter.  She was pleasantly surprised that it took her only 5 minutes to cast her ballot, no long lines in sight.

 

 "Because I saw it on the news I thought, 'Oh Lord we're going to have to wait a long time' but we didn't," said Kelly.

 

That's not to say it wasn't busy at area Supervisor of Elections Offices.

 

Martin County Supervisor of Elections Vicki Davis stands beside the tens of thousands of ballots already in.

 

She says while early voting numbers were down slightly from 2008, when you add in absentee ballots, more than half of the county's registered voters, are done.

 

"Voters that show up at our polls tomorrow, will not have long lines to wait in," said Davis.

 

The warehouse has been cleared out, as the voting machines have been moved to the county's 31 precincts.  That's down from more than 50 a few election cycles ago because of the popularity of early voting.

 

In Indian River County, it's the same story, more than half of all registered voters are already done voting.