Elections officials in Broward County are in the thick of a slow election night.
By 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon voter turnout in Broward County hit nearly 74% of registered voters. By the time of polls closing, that had reached about 76%.
“Voting has been front-loaded so we had 840,000 people vote before Election Day,” Antonacci said. “So on Election Day things are much more manageable. The kind of challenges we’ve had on election day in the past have not presented today.”
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In the 2018 midterm election, the county did not count tens of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots ahead of time, and suffered slow reporting. The closest races went to recounts.
More than 474,000 people voted by mail and about 365,000 people voted early. Close to 124,000 voted on Election Day. The canvassing board, which consists of Antonacci, county Judge Kenneth Gottlieb, and County Commissioner Michael Udine, started meeting this afternoon to review provisional ballots — there are nearly 600, which would make a difference if any of the municipal races end up going to a recount.
“It’s been a very good day so far,” Antonacci said. “In the back now we have vote-by-mail ballots that have been received last night and today, they’re being processed and when they’re cued up they’ll be run through the machines. We’re in very good shape.”
Antonacci said they’ve had a lot of phone calls coming in from poll workers trying to verify the identity of voters, and from voters trying to find out where their precincts are.
After the polls closed at 7 p.m. Antonacci said the results from early voting were uploaded first, then vote-by-mail ballots that have been processed to date.
“My goal is to be done with everything by midnight. The thing that will change that is if recounts are ordered,” Antonacci said. “Statewide recounts will be a real challenge, county recounts will be a challenge. We have so many municipal elections on the ballot, I’m anticipating there’s going to be some kind of recount.”
