Florida Keys residents will have to wait longer than usual to learn the results of the upcoming election on Aug. 18. Why? Fax machines, or lack thereof.
It’s true. Fax machines — and the telephone landlines that connect them — are essential to elections in the Florida Keys.
Removal of those landlines from some polling places throughout the island chain will delay the results of the Aug. 18 election, Monroe County Supervisor of Elections Sherri Hodies told the Keys Weekly late Tuesday night, on Aug. 11.
“Outdated and unreliable copper communication lines that serviced some of our precincts were recently removed. These lines were the fax lines previously used to transmit election results,” Hodies said before emphasizing, “No internet connection is used to transmit election results, including the new fiber-optic options.
“As a result, for this election, every precinct will be required to securely lock and seal its voting results and maintain a documented chain of custody. The results will then be transported by secure couriers to the appropriate Supervisor of Elections office for processing.
“There is no change to early voting or vote-by-mail timing. Those results will be available by 7:30 p.m. on election night.
“We understand that voters want election results as quickly as possible. However, it is more important that every step of the process prioritizes the accuracy, security and integrity of our elections,” Hodies said.
Though long obsolete for many businesses, fax machines remain crucial to industries that demand secure transmission of information, including health care, justice, finance and government, including election security.
A fax transmission is a point-to-point connection between sender and receiver that uses telephone infrastructure rather than internet connectivity, meaning its contents do not pass through third-party relay servers and the machine does not create copies in email caches or search results.
Voting machines in Monroe County, and the rest of Florida, are never connected to the internet.
