No luck with Manatee County vaccine lottery system?

Manatee County commissioners want to change the county’s lottery system used to book COVID-19 vaccine appointments.

Commissioners who favored changes to the registration system said at the commission’s Feb. 23 regular meeting the lottery had served its purpose by preventing the registration website from crashing and seniors from repeatedly taking time out of their days to try to get registered for a limited number of spots every time a new shipment of vaccine doses arrived.

However, they no longer believe the lottery is the most effective way to select people for vaccination.

Commissioner Reggie Bellamy first broached the idea. He wanted to switch to something resembling first-come, first-serve. Other commissioners such as James Satcher and Vanessa Baugh supported exploring changes.

Satcher favored a system that would use registration numbers to take the first, say, 25,000 people to register and randomize them. Then they would do the same with the next 25,000 and so on, essentially creating a series of mini-lotteries that account for the general time when people registered.

Baugh said Feb. 26 she preferred a system that would simply start from the first registration number and move down the list from there, but she also liked Satcher’s idea.

Commissioner George Kruse said the lottery was instituted to make life easier for citizens who couldn’t get to a computer at certain times of day. At this point, he said, everyone who wanted to sign up should be registered. He suggested taking all the names in the pool and randomizing them now so everyone knows where they are in line rather than enduring the agony of the unknown.

Kruse didn’t like the idea of switching to first-come, first-serve because he said some people decided not to register immediately when the county switched to a lottery system in order to help prevent the registration website from crashing.

“We told them it doesn’t matter if you’re number 4,000 or 40,000, you have the same chance,” Kruse said. “They might have taken a few extra days. Maybe they didn’t get a babysitter for their kids. Maybe they said, ‘I’ll go when I’m downtown anyway and I’ll hit that computer.’ Because we promised them there was no disadvantage. You were not in any worse spot if you signed up today or tomorrow or a month from now.”

Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge was never thrilled with the lottery system. However, he is wary of making a change now because he said the decision to go with a lottery amounted to a commitment to Manatee County citizens.

Baugh said a change will likely upset some people who were told the lottery would provide an even playing field for them no matter when they signed up. However, she also said some people will be unhappy no matter what decision the county makes. As evidence, she pointed to the large number of angry emails she and her fellow commissioners receive from constituents upset by the lottery system.

After commissioners told Public Safety Director Jacob Saur to evaluate which of their suggestions would be technologically feasible at the Feb. 23 meeting, Baugh had a briefing last week with Public Safety Department representatives and Information Technology Services Director Paul Alexander. She said they don’t want to change the lottery system, because they believe most of the people in the county’s standby pool will receive vaccinations by April.

Baugh said based on what she learned in the briefing, vaccination appointments could “definitely” be organized by registration number, which indicates the order in which people registered. She is unsure if the system could be organized by date. Saur did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Baugh said changing the system is even more important amid reports Gov. Ron DeSantis will lower the age requirement to 60 or 55 for people to get vaccines in March. Though she supports the idea of expanding the pool, she is concerned people who are still waiting to receive vaccinations after registering for the pool in the first few days after it opened Jan. 7 will have to wait even longer.