Pete Antonacci, appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis as the head of Florida's new Office of Election Crimes and Security has died of a heart attack.

Officials in Broward County, a Democratic stronghold and Florida's second most populous county, uncovered the scheme over the summer. Broward County supervisor of elections officials flagged the registrations as suspicious and turned them over to the Broward state attorney's office. “We cannot comment on an ongoing, active criminal investigation,” state attorney’s office spokeswoman Paula McMahon told The Associated Press in an email. Thirty of the 51 were verified by the state attorney's office as being deceased. Elections officials said the applications were left blank in spaces for driver license and Social Security numbers.

More than 2.3 million Floridians had voted by mail by the cutoff at 7 p.m. Tuesday. We had a lot of mail voting, you know, in Florida, DeSantis continued. The states primary elections came amid President Donald Trumps repeated complaints about voting by mail. Florida voters must request mail-in ballots. An odd confluence of influences made it difficult to predict voter behavior in the primary elections, Antonacci said.

Collectively, Floridas 67 county supervisors of elections have decades of experience responding to disasters. But the coronavirus pandemic presents a calamity of a different kind, posing an unknown threat thats forcing elections officials to plan for a continuum of possibilities. Elections officials had what Earley called a dry run during the presidential primary elections as the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease known as COVID-19, quickly spread through the state in March. Theyre buying no-contact thermometers to check poll workers temperatures. Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer will rely on face shields and Plexiglas barriers to separate poll workers and voters.