4-minute read
It was largely smooth sailing at polling sites around Lakeland on Tuesday. Most precincts had small groups of voters lined up when they opened at 7 a.m., but wait times were short.
Poll workers said about 50 people were waiting for the doors to open at Precinct 217 in the Lake Mirror Center, but it didn’t take long to get them all checked in. Precinct 211 in the Family Worship Center on East Main Street had about a dozen people lined up, according to volunteers.
The busiest times were right when the polls opened, lunch time and then early evening as people voted after work.
Shortly after 5 p.m., there was a line of about 10 people at Precinct 231 in the First Alliance Church on East Edgewood Drive, but it moved quickly. One voter said she was in and out in less than 20 minutes.
No glitches or disturbances: There were no equipment or facility-related delays at any of the county’s 172 precincts, according to Rachel Harris, community services director with the Polk Supervisor of Elections Office.
And despite especially high emotions and polarization this election cycle, Lakeland Police said there were no calls regarding disturbances at polling sites.
Flooding-related detour: Some voters assigned to the Family Worship Center at 1350 E. Main St. said it was tricky to access the church because of detours related to the pumping of flood water from Lake Bonny.
Drivers approaching from the west had no issues. The entrance on Rose Street was open, and a sign on North Lake Parker Avenue directed drivers to the precinct. However, those coming from the north or the east had to navigate detours.
Voters Shené Walsh and her uncle Michael Buckley said they drove by on Monday to make sure they knew where to go. “If he wouldn’t have went yesterday, we would have (had difficulty),” Walsh said.
Even with the detours, poll worker Bill Blocher said the precinct averaged 36 voters an hour throughout the day.
Ballot counting process: More than half of the county’s eligible voters cast ballots before Election Day, but election officials cautioned that it wouldn’t necessarily speed up the reporting of results.
The Supervisor of Elections Office will report the results of three different voting methods today:
- Mail-in ballots.
- Early in-person voting.
- Election-day voting.
In Florida, statutes allow election workers to begin opening and processing mail-in votes before Election Day.
Polk County had received 83,186 as of Monday afternoon. Harris said processing those ballots began on Oct. 28, after the canvassing board had convened and the logic and accuracy testing of equipment was complete.
However, those results might be the last to be reported.
Last-minute deliveries: Voters had until 7 p.m. to deliver their completed ballots to either the county’s election headquarters at 250 S. Broadway Ave. in Bartow or the operation center at 70 Florida Citrus Blvd. in Winter Haven.
“There are often stragglers,” Harris said.
Tyler Price, 24, of Winter Haven, came through the doors of the operations center and delivered his girlfriend’s mail-in ballot at 6:59 p.m. with one minute to spare.
“I already voted,” Price said. “But she had to work, so I brought it for her.”
Harris said any last-minute ballots delivered to Bartow would have to be transported securely to Winter Haven and reviewed by a canvassing board before they could be counted. So the vote-by-mail totals are often the last to be reported, even if 99% of them are tallied before 7 p.m.
Voting method preferences vary by party: Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats in Polk County by about 4 to 3. However, Democrats returned slightly more vote-by-mail ballots.
Democrats returned 33,352 mail-in ballots to Republicans’ 32,688. Voters from minor parties or with no party affiliation returned 17,146.
By contrast, significantly more Republicans took advantage of early in-person voting. Harris said 73,708 Republicans voted early compared with 41,697 Democrats and 34,166 voters with minor party or no party affiliation.
That means outcomes can shift depending on which type of vote is reported first.
Mail-in voting peaked in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 38.84% of Polk County voters putting their ballots in the mail. As of Monday, 32.7% of Polk voters had returned mail-in ballots for this election.
latest news
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
