Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Broward elections ‘quiet’ with more mail ballots
‘Quiet’ was the word on how the elections went Tuesday in five of Broward County’s municipalities.
In Broward’s bigger cities, winners all claimed their seats with relative ease. Vote-by mail was also a clear winner in terms of how people cast their ballots.
Most winners won their seats easily, with results pouring in for all but one precinct in less than 30 minutes. That final precinct was counted about an hour after the polls closed.
Polling stations have been “pretty quiet so far,” Consuelo Kelley, a spokeswoman for the county’s Supervisor of Elections, said late in the afternoon. Tuesday’s election represents Joe Scott’s first as the head of the Supervisor of Elections’ office.
City council or commission races were conducted in Coconut Creek, Deerfield Beach, Hillsboro Beach, Miramar and Sea Ranch
Lakes.
After polls closed, 17,665 people had cast their ballots, representing 12.45% of the county’s 141,884 registered voters.
Over 13,500 of those were mail-in ballots, according to data from the county. Only about 4,100 ballots were cast in person so far on Tuesday.
Turnout was actually higher than the March 2019 municipal elections in Broward County, where 41,626, or about 9.5% of registered voters in the county, voted. March 2020 municipal elections also served as the presidential primaries, so it saw much higher turnout at 232,076 voters, or about 25.6%.
A poll worker at Miramar United Methodist Church said voter traffic was slow. In Hillsboro Beach, Javier Garcia voted for Frank Kolb Jr. for a seat in the fourway race on the town commission. He voted in person at town hall, the town’s only polling place.
The small coastal town is about one mile long and less than 1.5 square miles in total area with about 2,000 residents.
Garcia, a 36-year-old salesman, said Kolb was the only candidate he felt represented the voice of the town after its five-person commission voted to purchase an empty lot, against the wishes of the community, he said.
“We found a candidate that was willing to go fight for us and give us a voice and that, today, is Frank,” he said. “[Our voices] haven’t been heard in this town for a long time. They voted 5-0 on this commission.”
Complete election results can be found at SunSentinel.com/results