General Election updates: A wet mess for voters in Brevard

Republican congressional candidate Dan Green canceled his election night watch party on Tuesday after heavy rains along Florida’s coastline caused flooding near the venue.

Green is running for Florida’s Ninth Congressional District, which includes Osceola and south Orange counties. Democrat Darren Soto has been representing the seat for five terms.

This spring, Republicans redrew that seat’s boundaries in a special session to give their party an advantage, roughly tripling it in size to include four new counties, a larger percentage of white voters and more rural communities. Now, it stretches all the way south to Lake Okeechobee.

Green lives in Indian River County, one of the four counties added to District 9. He had scheduled his watch party for Tuesday night at Waldo’s Secret Garden in Vero Beach.

The venue is on a stretch of road that has been prone to flooding. It was one of several businesses that was affected by road flooding from heavy rain in August, according to a report from WPTV.

Soto’s watch party will be held in Kissimmeet, which was not affected by the flooding this time.

Flooding from the rains also forced the Brevard County Supervisor of Elections to move six polling locations.

Among the biggest issues on the General Election ballot is a constitutional amendment proposed by the GOP-led Florida Legislature that, over two years, would significantly increase the homestead exemption for most homeowners.

Amendment 3 would increase the non-school homestead exemption for current Florida residents from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and then to $250,000 the following year. It would task the Legislature with creating the process for local governments to increase those exemptions and potentially eliminate those property taxes.

It would also cap increases in non-homestead assessments to 5% a year and restrict how property taxes can be used.

Amendment 3 has support from Florida Realtors and the Republican Party of Florida.

Here's the party's reason to vote yes: "Homeowners shouldn’t be taxed out of the homes they’ve worked for. Amendment 3 delivers real tax relief, slows runaway assessments, and makes local governments spend your money on core priorities."

Opposition to Amendment 3 has been widespread: from the Florida Democratic Party, but also numerous civic groups, public safety and law enforcement agencies and unions, as well as cities and counties throughout the state.

That's because passage would mean the loss of billions of dollars a year in funding for police, fire protection and local government services.

The Save Our Services coalition sums up its opposition this way: "Amendment 3 is a scam and tax shift that will cut our services and raise our costs."

In Florida, constitutional amendments need 60% of the vote to pass.

Kayla Kissel

/

Central Florida Public Media

If you're still figuring out who and what you want to vote for, you have options:

1. Voter guides. There's the voter guide on our website, which has information from the candidates who filled out the survey and publicly available information on those that skipped that opportunity. Another voter guide option is the League of Women Voters' Vote411.org.

2. Candidates websites and social media. You can see if a candidate's views reflect your own and, often, who is supporting that candidate.

3. News articles referencing the candidate or issue. A simple Google search in "News" mode will turn up recent news coverage referencing the ballot measure or candidate.

4. Follow the money. If you want to know who's backing a candidate, Central Florida Public Media elections reporter Sam Stockbridge has an explainer on how you can dive into campaign finance.

After we've all voted, we'll be looking to national media organizations to call many of the races.

At Central Florida Public Media, we rely on The Associated Press for races outside our region. And it's been doing this awhile. The AP first tabulated votes for U.S. elections in 1848. NPR also relies on the AP to call races.

It gathers data from local elections officials in about 5,000 races nationwide.

The AP says these reports are made by "a dedicated team of election analysts, researchers and race callers who make up our Decision Team."

When the AP declares winners, it doesn't make "projections," the news organization says in an article explaining the process. "If our race callers cannot definitively say a candidate has won, we do not engage in speculation."

They can call the race "the moment the trailing candidates no longer have a path to victory.

"Many races are won on election night, but it’s not uncommon for it to take a few days – and in rare instances, a few weeks – to reach that point."

In Florida, thanks in part to the early processing and counting of vote-by-mail ballots, we generally know the winners by the end of Election Day. That is, unless the race is a squeaker.

The political storm that is Election Day coincided in Brevard County with an actual storm with heavy rain and flooded streets and homes.

Some parts of southern Brevard County had more than 20 inches of rain. In the 24 hours before 2 p.m. Monday, the Melbourne area recorded more than 17 inches and Grant-Valkaria 23.6 inches, according to information from the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network.

Flash flooding especially has affected the Melbourne and Palm Bay areas. On Tuesday morning conditions were getting better, and the worst flooding was in the Lamplighter Village retirement community and Barefoot Bay.

Ryan Ellison

/

Central Florida Public Media

Sheriff Wayne Ivey said his office has been getting "tons of questions" about Election Day.

"Is voting open? Are polls open?," he added. "Obviously, some people know their polls have been impacted. Their polling locations have been impacted."

Brevard County Supervisor of Elections Tim Bobanic addressed those questions.

"Right now, we have six polling locations that had to be relocated due to the sites being completely unusable," Bobanic said. "Either they were completely inundated with water, with flood damage, no power or electricity."

The list and the new locations are on his website, votebrevard.gov.

And here they are:

• Precincts 307, 512 and 525: Moving from Max K. Rhodes Community Center to New Shiloh Christian Center, 3900 Sarno Road, Melbourne..
• Precinct 309: Moving from Veterans Memorial Complex to New Shiloh Christian Center, 3900 Sarno Road, Melbourne.
• Precinct 306: Moving from Eddie Lee Taylor Sr. Community Center to Joseph N. Davis Community Center, 2547 Bruce D. Buggs St., Melbourne.
• Precincts 323 and 509: Moving from Front Street Civic Center to Joseph N. Davis Community Center, 2547 Bruce D. Buggs St., Melbourne.
• Precinct 517: Moving from Faith Baptist Church of Palm Bay to Palm Bay City Hall Council Chambers, 120 Malabar Road SE, Palm Bay.
• Precinct 320, 513, and 522: Moving from EFSC Palm Bay - Community Dining Room to the Franklin T. DeGroodt Memorial Library, 6475 Minton Road SE, Palm Bay.

"Also," Bobanic said, "if you are unable to get to your polling place, but you do have the ability to get to one of my four administrative offices. You can do an election day emergency mail ballot."

Bobanic asked voters to show "a little patience and a little grace" to election workers.

"They are working under very extreme circumstances," he said. "A lot of them had their own homes flooded out, but yet they still came in to work."

Gov. Ron DeSantis declared an emergency due to the flooding. The Florida Division of Elections lists other counties in which polling places had to be relocated. They are Broward, Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties.

>> Read the full story on cfpublic.org.