With three-vote margin, recount will happen Friday for Lake Wales City Commission election

A Lake Wales City Commission election is headed for a recount on Friday.

First-term incumbent Daniel Williams’ lead over challenger Brandon Alvarado in the Seat 2 race increased to three votes after Thursday’s meeting of the Lake Wales Canvassing Board. The board’s three members — Mayor Jack Hilligoss and City Commissioners Robin Gibson and Keith Thompson — reviewed six potential ballots that had not been counted in Tuesday’s election and determined that four were valid.

Three of the new votes went to Williams, while Alvarado received one.

Six ballots had been returned by mail but not counted because their envelopes lacked signatures or bore signatures that did not match those on record or because of questions about the voter’s eligibility.

Of those six, three voters attempted to “cure” the ballots by responding to notices from the Supervisor of Elections Office, Lake Wales City Clerk Jennifer Nanek said during Thursday’s meeting. Nanek shared the three ballots with the board members, who unanimously voted to accept all of them.

The Canvassing Board then considered three ballots cast provisionally at polling stations on Tuesday. Elections Office workers designate ballots as provisional if a voter fails to produce photo identification or if there is another reason to question the voter’s eligibility.

Before passing those ballots to the board members, Nanek shared the recommendations on each from the Supervisor of Elections Office. One was set aside through an administrative error and should be counted, while the other two voters were not registered, according to the recommendations.

The board voted unanimously to accept the first and reject the other two.

At that point, Nanek opened envelopes to count the results: three new votes for Williams and one for Alvarado. That left Williams with an unofficial total of 942, compared with 939 for Alvarado. A third candidate for Seat 2, Crystal Higbee, collected 347 votes.

After Tuesday’s counting, Williams had led by a single vote over Alvarado, 939 to 939.

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Under Florida law, a machine recount automatically occurs if the margin between the top two candidates is less than or equal to 0.5% of the total votes. With the updated numbers, Williams’ lead is 0.13% of the 2,228 votes cast.

The recount, conducted by the Lake Wales Canvassing Board, will take place Friday at 11 a.m. at the Supervisors of Elections headquarters in Winter Haven. A public viewing area will be available, Nanek said.

When the margin is 0.25% or less of total votes, state law dictates that a manual recount also take place. The manual recount only considers ballots with “overvotes” or “undervotes,” not all that were cast.

Those are 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. Ballots can also be “outstacked” because they are damaged, said Rachel Harris, a spokesperson for the Supervisor of Elections Office.

The Supervisor of Elections Office has conducted seven recounts in local races since 2016, Harris said.

Nanek read the names of the voters as the Canvassing Board considered whether to accept the ballots. She said she had mixed the ballots into a different order before calling out the results, so that it would not be obvious which candidate each voter had chosen.

Gibson discussed the review of ballots in his comments at Wednesday’s City Commission meeting. He said that if the race winds up in a tie, Lake Wales must follow a state law that directs such races to be determined by chance. The statute does not specify the method for breaking the tie.

If a recount results in a tie, Nanek said it will be up to City Attorney Chuck Galloway to decide whether to flip a coin or use another tactic to settle the outcome.

Gibson lamented that Lake Wales’ charter does not call for runoff elections in races in which no candidate receives a majority of votes. He said he has long advocated for runoffs and would continue to do so. 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.”

Other cities in Polk County hold runoff elections when a race fails to produce a winner with a majority of the votes cast. Lakeland has held runoff elections for its City Commission, and Haines City will stage a runoff April 30 between Kim Downing and Clarence Daniels, the top two vote-getters out of four this week in the Seat 4 race for the City Commission.

The Lake Wales City Commission would need to revise the city charter to order runoff elections for races without a majority winner.

Williams, a pastor, was elected in 2021 to Seat 2. The commissioner must live in the eastern part of the city, though voting takes place citywide. Alvarado, 27, is the chief administrative officer for a construction company and is making his first run for office.

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: Recount set for Friday in tight Lake Wales city commission race