Early Voting Steady in Panhandle
October 29th, 2018 by Mike Vasilinda
More than 2.5 million people have already voted in Florida.
Early voting began over the weekend in most of the panhandle counties hit hardest by Hurricane Michael.
Turnout has been slow, but Monday morning showed signs things may be picking up.
Downtown Marianna still looks like a bomb went off.
Blocks away, we found a steady stream of early voters.
“I think we’re good. We’re tough people and we’ll fight through it,” said Virgil Shannon, a local timber consultant.
Early voting started Saturday in the county.
10% cast a ballot.
Normally, there would be 14 precincts open in Jackson county on Election Day, but this year there’ll be only three.
“We will have a sign indicating your polling place is closed,” said Jackson County Elections Supervisor, Sylvia Stephens. “Some still don’t have power. They’re being used for emergency staging sites, and also for distribution sites.”
30 miles south in Calhoun County, early voting has been open for a week.
While voting is expected to be fairly normal there, in Panama City, which has more than 40 precincts, only six super precincts are going to be open.
Back in Marianna, We found Jeff Cloud surveying his graphics business.
“The windows blew out on that end and the hurricane came through the building and blew this out,” said Cloud.
He’s not sure he’ll be able to reopen after rain damaged his equipment.
He is sure he will vote.
“We got a lot on our plate, but we’re still thinking about the future,” said Cloud. “Everything was great. We has the best… we had the best October we’ve had in forever and it’s because of Trump’s policies.”
The hurricane effected counties produced 70% of Rick Scott’s victory margin in 2014.
Turnout there could be one of the largest factors in deciding who is Florida’s next Governor.
In 2016 Donald Trump got 77,000 votes in the nine hardest hit counties.
His biggest margin came from Panama City in Bay County, which is registered Republican by a two to one margin.
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