Local supervisors say not yet, after the Supreme Court partially cleared a Trump executive order.
By Gretchen Cochran
Original Air Date: August 27, 2026
Host: On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a partial ruling that backs a Trump plan to give the U.S. Post Office a role in controlling vote-by-mail ballots. Gretchen Cochran reports on how this translates to the upcoming elections here on the Suncoast.
Gretchen Cochran: While daily newspaper headlines imply voting by mail may be in question, both Sarasota and Manatee County election supervisors are basically saying, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” That’s a phrase harkening back to England during the second world war.
The current angst stems from the U.S. Supreme Court’s partial ruling Monday that some fear would allow the Trump administration to pursue plans to restrict mail-in voting even before the midterm election November 3.
But ballots are already being fashioned, Ron Turner of Sarasota, said.
Ron Turner
Ron Turner: We’re already in the process of laying out the ballot right now. These things start well in advance because we mail overseas and military ballots starting 45 days before the November 3 general election, and then the domestic is 40 days before. That puts that deadline in September. September is only a few days away.
GC: Vote-by-mail is a big deal here. Laurie Pearlman, 76, of Siesta Key would be bereft if she could not vote by mail, she said. She and her 88-year-old husband used it when they were snow birds, moving back and forth to Michigan. Now, her husband is not so physically able. Standing in line in the heat would be impossible.
“I remember when I came of voting age and felt, ‘Wow, this is meaningful.’ Now I feel a responsibility to cast my ballot. It would be a huge loss if we could not vote by mail,” she said.
She’s not alone.
In Manatee County, in the August 18 primary election, more people voted by mail—nearly 30,000—than by early voting or even on election day. In Sarasota County, unofficial results show 53,000 voted by mail, compared to 18,000 early voting and 37,000 votes on election day.
And look at these numbers: Matthew Montavon and Allen Spence were facing off in the congressional primary for District 17. Montavon got 12,500 mail-in votes, Spence 4,000 less. And in the closely watched Sarasota School Board election, Heidi Brandt got slightly over 14,000 votes by mail, and Jimmy Glover pulled in almost twice that.
Late primary day August 18, Christian Ziegler, once Florida’s Republican Party Chair, observed in a Facebook post that vote-by-mail requests were an issue—but not in the way President Trump suggested, as something to be dumped. Ziegler noted Republicans request a ballot be sent to them, then return their vote-by-mail ballots while Democrats request near the same number but return far fewer. “Request more vote-by-mail ballots,” he urged his GOP followers.
David Dean, chair of the Sarasota County Democratic Party, said voting by mail is a major strategy for the party but statistical analysis of issues like return rates is ongoing.
And yet our president appears to believe voting by mail is a bad thing, fraught with irregularities. The high court’s ruling stems from an executive order in March that would basically amass approved voter lists. The U.S. Postal service would be directed to mail ballots only to people on that list. But lower courts have stalled portions of the election work-around that gives the post office power over elections.
WSLR questions to the U.S. Post Office’s regional office in Tampa went unanswered.
Here in Sarasota County, Supervisor Ron Turner said many elements of President Trump’s latest effort to manage elections have long been in place. His office already works with the post office in envelope design and bar codes that are approved in advance.
Turner also said voters’ lists are regularly purged, deleting names of people who have died or moved away. He calls it “list maintenance.”
Scott Farrington, the Manatee County Supervisor of Elections, calls the process “delisting,” and he says that is going on regularly.
Scott Farrington
Scott Farrington: If we do find anybody that’s on our voter rolls that we do not believe is a U.S. citizen, we go through our process to remove them from our rolls as being a voter, and then we send all of that information to the Office of Election Crimes and Security. It’s in Tallahassee. It’s a fairly new division, and it was created for what it sounds like—to filter through all the reports that they get, either from us as elections offices or, more likely, that they get from people outside of the office. They filter through all of that to determine what is potentially a legitimate report and what is not, and then they deal with it from there.
GC: Farrington recently sent that office 60 names of people that had voted but had not clarified their citizenship. Out of 300,000 registered voters, that’s not huge, he said.
The relationship with Homeland Security is not new either, Turner, of Sarasota, said.
RT: The state of Florida has used Homeland Security data to help verify citizenship and has done that for a number of years. Right now, I think that there’s a pause on that, I believe, because of a court case, but that had been occurring going back a number of years, I think even to a previous governor before this one.
GC: But what is new is the creation of a master voter list to be administered by the U.S. Post Office.
The ACLU and the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts have contested Trump’s original executive order.
For now, voters here should carry on as usual, our election supervisors say. Here’s Manatee’s Farrington:
SF: The short is, right now, nothing’s changed. We’re still in a watch-and-see mode. Long-term, we are following it closely to make sure that we can comply with anything that we need to.
GC: Sarasota’s Turner was taking a watchful eye as well.
Ron Turner
RT: People need to vote, and they need to vote in a way that they feel comfortable with, whether that’s by mail, early voting or election day. I would tell the voters I believe they trust in their local Supervisor of Elections office—at least, I hope they do—and that we attempt to provide the best service that we can for them, and if something changes, we will be the first to communicate that.
GC: For WSLR, this is Gretchen Cochran.
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