Voting has been under relentless attack, especially since the 2020 presidential election.
Conspiracy theorists, and even elected officials, have spread false claims about the integrity of voting, sowing doubts about the integrity elections that have driven internet warriors to their keyboards — and skeptics to protest in person at elections offices around the country.
Now, with Election Day 2024 less than eight weeks away, and mail voting in Florida starting in less than two weeks, the top elections officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties are hoping their newly opened headquarters facilities in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach will undermine efforts by those who’ve been attempting to undermine elections.
“There’s a lot of folks out there who have been trying to malign our election system and make people feel like they cannot trust elections in the United States. And one thing our facility does is that we have enhanced transparency so that people can see for themselves, they can learn for themselves how our elections are really run,” Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said. “And they don’t have to believe the nonsense that comes from certain political figures who want to degrade people’s trust in elections.”
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link said she hopes the greater public transparency in the new location will reduce the influence of election deniers.
There aren’t issues with election integrity, she said. “They make them up.” Still, she added, “We have to anticipate what election deniers think might be happening.”
Transparency
The philosophical and operational pillars of both facilities, which were designed independently, are greatly enhanced transparency and extensive security, both for elections workers and the ballots.
The physical features allow political activists, lawyers, elected officials, journalists and everyday citizens to watch almost everything that happens in the voting process — including routine administrative tasks that years ago rarely attracted much interest or attention.
The buildings are designed so that people can do their viewing and recording and online posting without interfering with the work that elections staffers are doing, and without threatening the staffers themselves.
The new ability to see what’s happening is striking. Both counties have long corridors for viewing everything that’s going on.
In Broward, Scott has dubbed the hall, which winds through a large area of the building, the “transparency corridor.”
“From the second the ballots come into the building until they’re stored away in our ballot vault for the 22 months that we store them after every election, the entire process is contained within this transparency corridor with big windows,” he said.
In Palm Beach County, Link had the end of the hall built at an angle, with a window, so people wouldn’t be suspicious that anything nefarious was taking place on the other side of the point at which the corridor ends.
“With all the glass, plus the cameras, everything being able where you can look at everything at one time if you want, we’re very hopeful that people will come and watch it and then feel better about it,” Link said.
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The increased transparency isn’t a panacea, Scott said. It won’t eliminate the spread of false information, especially as it becomes easier for people to create “deep fake” videos that purport to show things that didn’t happen.
In Palm Beach County, a public viewing room allows people to see the three-member Palm Beach County elections Canvassing Board one one side, the ballot tabulation room on another side, and a third side that houses the operation where spoiled ballots are duplicated.
Link said duplication of ballots is an area that generates an inordinate amount of suspicion from election deniers. A mail ballot can be spoiled by, for example, someone making a stray mark or a coffee stain. Duplicating it is a routine task, she said. The new system allows people to watch everything an elections employee does, with screens showing in the public viewing area the spoiled ballot and what’s being marked on the replacement ballot (both of which go to a separate staffer to check for accuracy.)
If there’s something that isn’t obvious, the ballot goes to the three-member elections Canvassing Board.
In Broward, people who want to see the Canvassing Board in action will be able to watch from a large atrium.
Security
Both offices are far more secure than the previous locations. The viewing hallways at both allow people to watch what’s taking place behind thick glass. Anyone who isn’t authorized in an area would find it next to impossible to get in.
Everything a person normally might do at an election office — register to vote or apply for a mail ballot — is handled at lobby windows. Each office has a system for people to drop off mail ballots for people who don’t want to rely on the Postal Service, and space for in-person early voting.
Someone who wishes to go beyond the public lobby will go through a security regimen. In Palm Beach County, a visitor is photographed and has their driver license or state ID scanned, and is issued a sticker showing their name and picture, similar to a visitor to a hospital.
In Broward, metal detectors may be used in some circumstances.
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Overview of the new Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office in West Palm Beach on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
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Both supervisors are serious about internal security.
At the Palm Beach County office, for example:
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Access to the most secure areas requires an employee to swipe their badge (and a record is maintained of all door openings) and also input a passcode.
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When the office ramps up the use of temporary workers for the fall election, the temps are required to wear vests color-coded to the secure areas they’re assigned to. Someone who is where they’re not supposed to be would stand out.
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In the cavernous room where machines prepare mail ballots to send to voters, no one can get more than a few steps in without putting all their belongings in a locker. The only pens allowed in the area for filling out reports are green, purple or red, issued by the office.
To avoid even the appearance of anything untoward, Link is enforcing extra rules on herself. She’s on the ballot, running for reelection in November. Once her office starts handling mail ballots that include her race, Link said she’s instructed that her keycard giving her access to sensitive areas will be deactivated. She said she’d only enter one of those areas when accompanied by another person, never alone.
Need for transparency
When angry mobs refused to accept then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss and President Joe Biden’s victory, their actions were was concentrated in swing states where close contests determined the national result in the Electoral College.
But election officials in South Florida took note. Scott was first elected in November 2020, and in the days after he saw what was happening in elections offices in other parts of the country where people were unwilling to accept the presidential results.
He took office in January 2021 — the day before the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, which he said illustrated the need for a secure facility and one that could be used to reassure the public about what election workers were doing.
Link said one change that came after she saw what happened elsewhere in 2020 was the addition of many more video screens showing what’s taking place.
“We don’t want anybody to say, ‘Oh, there’s a lot going on and I couldn’t see what was happening at that table.’ Because you have the ability to watch and observe. We don’t want anybody to even have the concern that something was being hidden from them. So as a result, we did add the cameras above and the ability to show them on TV.”
And South Florida hasn’t been immune from heated election controversies. In 2018, three statewide elections, including a pivotal U.S. Senate seat, were close, with results uncertain until days after Election Day. Conspiracy theories flooded the internet and political leaders riled up their voters during a lengthy recount.
Rick Scott, finishing his second term as governor and awaiting a final call in the Senate race, questioned whether there was “rampant fraud” happening in Broward and Palm Beach counties. (He won, and is seeking a second term in November.)
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., suggested during the recount that Democrats were trying to “steal an election.”
Fueled by social media posts from Trump, dozens of protestors massed outside the Broward Supervisor of Elections office in Lauderhill, where they chanted “lock her up” about Brenda Snipes, then the county supervisor of elections, and — in a precursor to what became a mantra for Trump supporters two years later — “stop the steal.”
There was never any evidence of any attempts to steal the election.
Almost two decades earlier Roger Stone was involved in the “Brooks Brothers riot” in which dozens of well dressed Republicans packed the Miami-Dade County Elections Office to stop the recount in the George W. Bush-Al Gore presidential election. Now a Fort Lauderdale resident, Stone is is today best known for his long association with Trump.
Outdated facilities
Well before the 2018 and 2020 elections, officials in both counties were talking about the need to replace outdated, inefficient facilities.
Elections operations in both counties were split between headquarters buildings and large spaces for preparing and tabulating ballots, and for storing and testing equipment and retaining ballots (By law, ballots must be stored for 22 months after an election.)
In Broward, the main office was at the Governmental Center in downtown Fort Lauderdale. The bulk of the operation was at a converted retail space on the back side of the Lauderhill Mall, occupying a location once used by a Kmart.
For the uninitiated, the entrance was difficult to find.
In Palm Beach County, the main office was just west of West Palm Beach. The rest of the election operation took place in space leased from a building products company in Riviera Beach. It was ill suited to accommodate public interest in observing election-related activities. It had, for example, only one bathroom for the public. When the state required security enhancements, a chain-link fence was installed.
Spaces for both offices predated the large increase in mail voting that has taken place in Florida since the state allowed widespread use of mail ballots starting with the 2002 elections. Neither had space designed to efficiently store, maintain and test the equipment that goes to each polling place and early voting site during election season.
New beginnings
The new facilities were planned separately and were on different timetables. Palm Beach County got moving somewhat earlier and finished somewhat earlier.
Scott and Link were adamant that the offices be finished in time for them to move in and operate the 2024 elections.
The Palm Beach County project was finished in April. Broward’s was completed in July.
The buildings weren’t cheap.
Broward’s project cost $103 million for land, design and construction, Ariadna Musarra, director of construction management said via email. The project was finished in July and people and equipment moved that month. Scott and county commissioners held a ceremonial ribbon-cutting last month.
Broward’s new office is about 155,000 square feet, Musarra said. It replaced 8,873 square feet at the Governmental Center in downtown Fort Lauderdale and 79,780 square feet of leased space at the Lauderhill Mall.
The Palm Beach County project cost about $60.3 million, said Isamí C. Ayala-Collazo, an assistant county administrator and the director of facilities development & operations.
Palm Beach County’s new office, completed in April, is about 160,000 square feet, Ayala-Collazo said. It replaced 38,000 square feet at the previous main office and 81,000 square feet of leased space.
One big difference: Broward bought the land. Palm Beach County used a site it already owned.
Scott and Link were heavily involved in the design of their facilities, examining what did and didn’t work in elections offices in other places. That’s how major features, such as the public viewing corridors, and more obscure elements, such as air hoses in the ballot processing rooms, came about.
Opening and organizing ballots mail ballots — 820,000 in the two counties in 2020 and 446,000 in 2022 — creates dust that potentially can clog equipment. In the previous locations, employees would use cans of spray air to clear the dust. The new offices have air hoses extending from the ceiling with nozzles at the end that look similar to car tire pumps.
Link and Scott are elected officials in their own right, independent of the county commissioners. But the counties provide their facilities, and the projects were handled by the county construction and facilities divisions, which operate under their respective county commissioners.
Broward, which had cast about for years trying to find a site agreeable to all the stakeholders, bought land and existing office buildings. Two buildings structures were torn down, the main building was extensively renovated, and additional, specialized space was constructed.
Officially, Broward County said it received an unsolicited proposal for the elections office site.
It was actually more complicated.
In 2018, then-County Commissioner Dale Holness pitched his colleagues on the idea of buying the building, which was then called Spectrum Office Park. A month later, he organized a political fundraiser at the site, which the owner provided, for that year’s Democratic candidate for governor, Andrew Gillum.
At the time, eight of the nine county commissioners were Democrats, and the political event there gave them a chance to see the building that Holness and the building owner were pushing to the county for a new elections office. One reason it raised eyebrows is that the owner of the building at the time was a Republican who was willing to offer it up as the site of a Democratic candidate’s fundraising event.
(The asking price at the time was $24 million. The county ended up paying $19.5 million.)
Broward Mayor Nan Rich, said at last month’s ribbon cutting ceremony that the new building “represents more than just bricks and mortar. It demonstrates Broward County’s commitment to the democratic process.”
Scott said Broward is fortunate that the county had the financial ability to create a top-of-the line facility.
“I feel pretty confident in saying we now have the best election facility in the country. This is now the model of what an election facility will look like in the future,” he said.
He and Link have room to debate whose office is better, a discussion that may not come until after Election Day. With both heavily into preparations for November, neither has visited the other’s new office.
This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
