Sarasota voters head to the polls on primary election day

Campaign supporters and poll workers were up before dawn Tuesday as voters started casting their ballots across the county in the state’s primary election at 7 a.m.

Two hours later, Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Ron Turner said all precincts opened on time and things were running smoothly. 

“Everything's good. You know, we were here very early this morning in contact with all the polling locations,” Turner said.

Photo by Jim DeLa

He expects the voter turnout for the primary will be in the 30-40% range. In 2022, he said the county saw 37% of voters cast ballots. “So to hit that this time, we would need to see a bigger peak than we're seeing right now. My guess is hopefully more than 30%.”

Early voting and mail-in voting has been popular, Turner said, adding that about 56,000 mail-in ballots have been received and about 14,000 people voted early. 

“That's going to be the largest portion of the ballots in this primary election. The general election is different,” he said. “You're going to see a different type of turnout, a lot larger, and you'll see more people utilize early voting in person, early voting and potentially election day early voting." 

It’s all to prepare for what Turner predicts will be a huge turnout in November. “We made huge investments in equipment and people and resources … to be prepared for this November election, because we anticipate a large turnout, if not a historic turnout in November.”

A slow start

It was a slow start at Church of the Palms. Two men were standing at the entrance a few minutes before the polls officially opened at 7 a.m.

Photo by Jim DeLa

In the church’s parking lot, just beyond the 150-foot perimeter of the door to the voting site, Mary Dailey was setting up “Harris for President” signs. 

A “greeter” with the Democratic Party of Sarasota County, she was also making sure a small table decorated in red, white and blue was stocked with campaign literature. “We’re available to anyone who has questions,” she said. 

“This isn’t an ‘early’ site,” she observed, surveying a near-empty parking lot. “If we get 40% (of eligible voters) today, we’ll be lucky.” 

Dailey said has been doing this for a while. “My first political activity was hanging door knockers for JFK,” she said. “I was much younger then.”

Other voters began to trickle in. One woman emerging from the precinct building described herself as a moderate Republican who is increasingly at odds with the party’s hard-line stances. 

She also said she was most interested in the hospital board race, noting she was voting against candidates on the so-called “Medical Freedom” ticket, so “we don’t lose control to people who don’t share my values.”

A lifelong Sarasota resident, she said her family are all staunch Republicans. She declined to give her name. “I don’t need my family giving me a hard time for expressing my views to a newspaper,” she said.

As the sun began to heat the morning air, campaign volunteers for many candidates filled the front of the parking lot at the Knights of Columbus hall on Fruitville Road. 

The volunteers vastly outnumbered voters; the Democrats and Republicans on opposite sides of the lot managed to broker a detente as both groups descended upon drivers entering the parking lot, eager to hand out voting guides and other literature.

Heather Ostermann was pacing the sidewalk, waving a campaign sign for Alexandra Coe, a county commission candidate, as drivers honked as they passed by. “I’m here as long as they tell me,” she said. “We want to be sure we save our county.” 

At another polling site at Sarasota Baptist Church on Proctor Road, Sarasota School Board candidate Liz Barker was holding a sign and waving as passers by with a group of women she called her PTO gang, women who she has known for years through volunteering at her children’s school. 

Barker decried what she described as infighting between Republican candidates during the campaign. “We shouldn’t be politicizing education,” Barker said. “I’m glad to be staying out of the fray at this point,” she said. “We want what’s best for our kids.”

In another part of the church parking lot, Hospital Board candidate Kevin Cooper was waiting for more voters to arrive. “The vibe is good, everyone’s cool. Everyone is supportive of the process and that’s nice,” he said. “I didn’t realize how much that would energize me."

Results to come quickly  

Once the polls close at 7 a.m., results should be announced quickly, Turner said.

“The first election results that people are going to see on our website, or are going to be issued, are going to be all the early voting,” he explained. “Because early voting ended on Sunday, the in-person, early voting, and then the vast majority of vote-by-mail ballots.”

So those are the first two numbers that you get. After that, the polls start trickling in when those polling locations close because the last person in line at 7 p.m. still gets to vote. 

"I'd say about 7:10, 7:15, we’ll start getting some results in from the polling locations." 

During the day, voters can go to SarasotaVotes.org to see unofficial turnout numbers. “You can watch it pretty much real-time. You can see every site what the turnout is for those locations, or by precinct or by party or by voting method. 

"You can also watch where there's graphs for the by the hour, so you can watch what we're averaging.”