Trump's 2020 defeat, early voting and mail-in ballots define race for elections supervisor in Florida's Lake County

ORLANDO, Fla. — In heavily Republican Lake County, the race for elections supervisor may turn on a surprising question: Is it bad to make it easy to vote?

Republican supervisor Alan Hays is being challenged in the GOP primary this month by Tom Vail, who denies former President Donald Trump lost in 2020 and called for “secession” after that election.

Vail, a vice chair of the Lake GOP, claims on his website that “Easy to Vote means Easy to Cheat,” proposing to end all early voting and almost all voting by mail.

State law currently requires counties to offer both voting options, and Vail has said he will follow the law. But, if elected, he would have authority to limit voters’ options by restricting the days and locations for voting ahead of election day.

Hays is the latest local elections official — in Florida and across the country — to face a challenge from someone promoting the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. GOP elections supervisors in Lee and Pinellas counties face similar primary contests against election conspiracists.

Vail, whose website alleges “MASSIVE ballot trafficking” in 2020 said he wants to eliminate almost all “easy-to-vote” methods.

Hays, who previously served 12 years in the Florida Legislature, said the 2020 elections were conducted fairly and honestly and that Vail’s ideas would undermine election processes and voter confidence.

“I’ve said many times, the biggest tragedy of the 2020 election is not who won or who lost the election,” Hays said. “The biggest tragedy is the loss of confidence in the system that has been perpetrated on the American voter by these people that repeat lie after lie after lie multiple times.”

“I don’t mind a challenge,” he said. “But I want it to be based on fact and not mythical innuendo trash.”

Natalie Tennant, a former West Virginia secretary of state and former resident fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, said the false claims about the 2020 presidential election are impacting election officials races across the country.

“This conspiracy theory just continues to weed itself in,” she said. “And that’s what is leading to these challenges pushing out long-standing county (officials).”

In Maricopa County, Arizona, elections official Stephen Richer, a Republican who defended the county’s voting systems, for example, lost a GOP primary last month to Justin Heap. Heap was recruited to run by a state senator who was later indicted for his role in an alleged “fake elector” scheme to help Trump, according to NPR.

Hays, who served in the state House and Senate, was elected supervisor in 2016 and is now seeking a third term.

‘Eliminate early voting’

The Lake County GOP, which Vail serves as a vice chair, made headlines for “demanding” a statewide forensic audit of the 2020 election in Florida, despite Trump winning the state by nearly 372,000 votes and Lake County by more than 43,000 votes.

As Lake GOP treasurer in 2021, Vail sent a newsletter email to the Lake County Tea Party that said, “We CANNOT allow a FRAUDULENT ELECTION to stand.”

“We may have only one choice to preserve ANY freedom – SECESSION!” Vail wrote. “To choose otherwise may mean submitting to the coming Totalitarian Regime.”

Now, Vail is opposing Hays on a platform to end early voting, arguing it “provides a preview of voter turnout for any planned malfeasance.”

Vail wouldn’t be able to fulfill that promise if elected — which he acknowledged in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel editorial board — but he could curb some of the convenience.

State law requires a minimum of eight days of early voting and allows for no more than 14. But supervisors have leeway to determine how many early voting sites are open in their county and could offer it only in the main elections office.

Vail also wants to restrict voting by mail to only those in the military, hospitalized or facing other “unavoidable excuses.”

“I’m sure some people appreciate the convenience,” Vail said when asked by the Orlando Sentinel editorial board about ending the popular voting options.

“It’s a matter of mindset,” Vail said. “They’re gradually, gradually opening little doors for more and more cheating. The mail balloting is the biggest part of it. They change the terminology. It’s no longer an absentee ballot. It’s a vote-by-mail ballot. That’s where it starts. It starts with how people think.”

Vail declined to speak with a Sentinel reporter.

Voting by mail in Florida was initially a Republican initiative, gradually expanded in the 2000s and 2010s and largely benefitting the GOP, which had many senior voters.

More than 4.3 million people voted early in Florida in the 2020 general election, with nearly 2.3 million voting early in the 2022 midterms. That included more than 51,000 Lake voters, more than half of which were Republicans.

In addition, nearly 5 million people voted by mail in Florida in 2020 and nearly 2.8 million in 2022. In Lake County, more than 36,000 people voted by mail in 2022, including nearly 15,000 Republicans.

State law also requires mail-in voting, but a supervisor has wide authority about how and where mail ballots can be dropped off and can decide how much to promote the option.

A proposal to end universal mail-in voting, which Hays had called “a nonsensical idea,” was suggested in January by state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a former state GOP chairman, but the bill ultimately died in committee.

Hays said Lake voters like options and a return to one-day voting would be deeply unpopular in his county.

“My phone would be exploding with angry outbursts of many voters, and it would be well deserved,” Hays said. “Not only being denied early voting privilege, not only being denied the vote-by-mail privilege, but being expected to stand in lines that are probably half a mile long on Election Day is completely absurd.”

‘Voters should not be encouraged’

Vail’s stance on voter outreach, according to his site, is that “disinterested, though qualified voters should not be encouraged to register to vote.”

He also calls for ending the established practice of supervisors reporting early turnout numbers, claiming it “can be a signal to engage in election fraud.”

In addition, Vail wants outside poll watchers to have a role in nearly every election process, including “oversight of Voter Registrations.”

But overzealous policing of registrations is problematic, warned Daniel A. Smith, the chair of political science at the University of Florida.

“What you don’t want is someone coming in using data that is highly unreliable … to purge people from the voter rolls who are legitimate voters,” Smith said. “Because the next thing you know, it could be you.”

If voters support Vail and others who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, Smith added, it will be akin to people “who believe the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked now wanting to run NASA.”

Hays agreed, saying Vail’s ideas, “would set back the progress that has been made in elections administration over the last 20 years.”

With no Democratic candidate for the position, the Aug. 20 GOP primary for election supervisor would have been open to all voters if not for two write-in candidates. One of those candidates, Edward Prosienski, contributed to Vail’s campaign in April and May.

Florida law says that any other candidate, even a write-in, closes a party primary to just its voters. That creates a much different electorate than a race open to all registered voters. Whoever wins the GOP primary, will face the two write-in candidates in November.

_____