Incumbent Williams prevails by 4 votes in recount of Lake Wales City Commission election

Lake Wales City Commissioner Daniel Williams has secured a second term after prevailing Friday in a recount of the Seat 2 race.

Williams emerged with a four-vote victory over challenger Brandon Alvarado in the official results. The Lake Wales Canvassing Board oversaw the recount, held Friday morning at the Supervisors of Elections headquarters in Winter Haven and necessary because the margin separating the top two candidates was less than 0.25%.

Following both machine and manual recounts Friday, the Lake Wales Canvassing Board certified the official results, showing Williams with 943 votes to 939 for Alvarado. A third candidate for Seat 2, Crystal Higbee, received 347 votes.

A machine recount measured Williams' vote total at 941, Lake Wales City Clerk Jennifer Nanek said. The canvassing board then examined multiple ballots that were not tabulated by voting machines during Tuesday’s election because overvotes or undervotes.

The board members determined that voters had clearly marked their intent on two ballots, though not in ways that a vote scanner recognized, Nanek said. Both votes went to Williams.

Williams, a pastor, gained election to Seat 2 in 2021. Alvarado, 27, is the chief administrative officer for a construction company and was making his first run for office.

Williams, 50, led by a single vote, 939 to 938, when the Polk County Supervisor of Elections Office posted unofficial results Tuesday night.

The margin increased to three after a meeting Thursday of the Canvassing Board, composed of Mayor Jack Hilligoss and City Commissioners Robin Gibson and Keith Thompson. They considered six uncounted ballots, three submitted by mail and three cast provisionally at polling stations on Tuesday.

The board voted unanimously to accept four of the six, resulting in three more votes for Williams and one for Alvarado.

Florida law requires a machine recount if the margin between the top two candidates is less than or equal to 0.5% of the total votes. As of Thursday, Williams led by 0.13% out of the 2,228 total votes cast.

If the margin is 0.25% or less of total votes, state law dictates that a manual recount be held. The manual recount considers only ballots not counted because a scanning machine read them as having either no mark or more than one oval marked for the Seat 2 race or because the ballot was damaged.

No runoff in Lake Wales

Lake Wales does not hold runoff elections for races in which no candidate receives a majority of votes, as some other local cities do. During Thursday’s canvassing board meeting, Gibson said he has long advocated for runoffs and would continue to do so.

The Lake Wales City Commission would have to approve a referendum on revising the city charter to allow runoff elections for races without a majority winner. Gibson said he has researched the matter and found that the cost of runoff elections is not a deterrent.

“I sure wish we had a runoff in this race,” Gibson said. “There were plenty of votes cast for a third party, and those votes would have made the difference, and the difference would be made by our citizens, as opposed to the potential for a coin flip, which is obnoxious to me.”

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State law dictates that elections ending in ties be determined by chance, though the statute does not specify the method to be used. Nanek said that if a tie had resulted, City Attorney Chuck Galloway would have decided whether to flip a coin or use another tactic to settle the outcome.

In Lake Wales’ other city commission race, Carol Gillespie ousted first-term incumbent Danny Krueger, capturing 57.4% of the vote. She will take office May 7, when Williams will be sworn in for a second term. Both terms will run until 2027.

Williams did not immediately respond to a voicemail left early Friday afternoon.

'Statement to the incumbents'

Though disappointed, Alvarado said he enjoyed the campaign and took pride in nearly unseating an incumbent despite having no political experience.

“I think the one thing that we did in this campaign, with the election of Ms. Carol Gillespie and how close this election was, we sent a real statement to the incumbents that the people are not happy with the direction Lake Wales is going in,” Alvarado said. “They really want to see some active change, and my hope is that the incumbents take some time to reflect on what the people had to say in this election.”

Alvarado said the race, the closest in recent history for Lake Wales, confirmed that the city should adopt runoff elections.

“There was no majority, and with it being so close, this was a prime race where we would settle all dispute if there was a runoff,” he said. “Plenty of other cities in Polk County do a runoff. There's no reason why Lake Wales shouldn't be able to do that. It's not that much more expensive, and at the end of the day, there's no question who got 50% plus 1 of the vote.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Incumbent wins by 4 votes in Lake Wales City Commission recount