BOCA RATON, Fla. — Hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots have been sent to voters in South Florida.
But one man in southern Palm Beach County said his ballot never made it to his mailbox.
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Peter Cutler has been waiting multiple days for his mail-in ballot.
"I have to admit, I was concerned," Cutler said.
He was even more concerned when he called the elections office.
"He told me, 'Let me check in the computer,' and that's when he told me it was mailed out to somebody on Fifth Avenue, and I said, 'I don't live on Fifth Avenue.'"
Cutler's West Boca Raton condo is not even close to Fifth Avenue. The supervisor of elections said the ballot actually went to a different Peter Cutler.
"After we received (Cutler's) information, we canceled that ballot to make sure that ballot, A: It had not been counted, and B: It can't because we canceled it," said Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link.
She said each ballot has a bar code, making it easy to cancel that ballot if someone had tried to have it counted.
"That ballot won't be counted, and Mr. Cutler is getting a new one," said Sartory Link.
Sartory Link said safeguards in the Florida mail-in ballot system protect voters like Cutler, who values his vote and was worried he might have lost it.
"There's so much stuff going on about votes and votes by mail, and I've voted by mail for years now and have never had a problem," Cutler said. "So, when it happened to me I said, 'I hope I'm the only one, and what if it's not?'"
Sartory Link said problems like this do not happen often, and they can correct it.
Voters can also track their mail-in ballots on supervisor of elections website under the "My Status" tab.
"If you have a request on file, it will show you have requested it, then it will tell you what day we sent it, and then once you send it back, it will say received," Sartory Link said.
The website will also alert voters if something is wrong with their ballots.
The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Oct. 24.
