8/10 - WOKV SPECIAL - PRIMARY ELECTION PRIMER

Since 1946, one name began earning the trust of Northeast Florida families, Jack C. Wilson Roofing Company. Family owned, known for quality, honesty, and a handshake that meant something. And 80 years later, we're still here, licensed, bonded, insured, and proud to serve Duval, Clay, and St. John's County. Request a free estimate at jackseywilsonroofing.com. Jack C. Wilson Roofing Company, the first name in Jacksonville Roofing. Turnout expectations may be soft in a primary, but every election has consequences. And Florida's primary may be the final verdict in several local races. Who wins the GOP nomination for governor? Can a Jacksonville Democrat secure her party's nomination to try and unseat a sitting Republican senator? From school board to a special city council race, we're giving you a primary primer so you can fill out your ballot with knowledge. Joining me is Action News Jack State and local government reporter Jake Stofan and WEOKV. political analyst Sean Frieder, the director of the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida. Sean, let's start with you. Do you have an expectation on turnout? Turnout, I would think, would be low for a couple years. I mean, turnout for primary elections is always low relative to the generals. In a midterm year, that's going to be heightened. Republican enthusiasm might be particularly low in this turnout. And that's also a lot of the demographic groups that tend to turn out for primaries, they tend to be more Republican-weighted. So older folks are a lot more likely to turn. in primaries, they tend to go more towards Republicans. So I can see a dip in turnout, which the more there's a dip in turnout, the more interesting things could potentially happen. Still, I think a lot of these margins are pretty big in these races. What is driving turnout this election campaign in August? Turnout, I think, usually gets driven by frustration with incumbents. At the national level, I think that that leads to a very interesting general election midterm. At the state level in the primary, I'm not necessarily sure that we see a lot of deep frustration. in terms of at least Republicans wanting to turn over their own. So I think Republican enthusiasm for turnout in the primary might be a bit low. For Democrats, again, I think enthusiasm is going to be pretty high in the general election. But for the primary, again, a lot of the demographic groups, younger folks that tend to vote for Democrats, less likely to turn out in primaries, just generally. Let's start at the top of the ticket, Jake Stofan. What's the expectation, as you see the top of the ballot, Republican governor's race, a number of names, but one really seems to stand out and has been standing out this pre-primary season. Certainly in the polls that we would generally consider reputable, all the candidates seem to have their own. poll numbers that they like to point to showing them within, you know, 10 or 5 or even two points against Congressman Byron Donalds's who is by and far the lead candidate by all reputable polling showing him 30 points ahead. I wouldn't anticipate that we see any major surprises on the 18th in that race. But you do have... Perhaps James Fishback has been getting the most attention among the Republican candidates.

primarily driven online, doing a lot of sort of headline grabbing things. I think I saw him standing in front of a podium that said legalize raw milk. So picking up on these very niche issues that seem to resonate with some voters. I mean, he goes to these events and he generates a crowd. But. Are those going to be the voters that really shift, you know, the outcome? Probably not when you have the Trump endorsement behind Donald's. You know, many elected official, kind of the establishment Republican Party backing Donald's in this race. And Jay Collins and Paul Renner, you know, just really have not been able to generate a whole lot of momentum according to the polling. Has this been a non-traditional gubernatorial primary so far on the Republican side, Sean? In some ways, I mean, especially the fishback campaign. Byron Donalds's, again, our polling, we pulled back in February. He was ahead by the 30, 40 points we were talking about there. There's been a couple other polls that have since found similar numbers. We find Donald so far ahead that we neglected actually on purpose to poll again in our most recent poll in July, just assuming that those numbers continue to stay the same. I think the interesting thing that's kind of represented by these four candidates is, as Jake was saying a bit, the styles of... of campaigning that they're all adjusting to. Donald's is winning because he's got the endorsement. So he kind of represents a continuation of what's worked in the past. If you get the big name endorsement, you've got name recognition, you're going to go really far. And so that's why Donald's probably going to handily win this. But, you know, Paul Renner, more of an old school traditional campaign and not generating a lot of noise. Jay Collins, also similar in that way, but done some of the AI campaigning. So I think that's attracted him a little bit more attention. Fishback seems to really be understanding kind of how to reach into the 18 to 35 demographic. and gets that online advertising stunts, those kinds of things are going to pull attention. But again, as was said, who actually shows up in these midterm primary elections? It's not young people. He's reaching out to young people. I think that there's a base enthusiasm there, but I don't necessarily know if that's enough to put him very close to Donald's. I think that all of these candidates, Susan Collins and fishback, probably if I had to guess, looking at something like gaining in the 8 to 15% range. And, you know, a fishback with the kind of campaign that he's run manages to be the second place. I think that's an interesting story in its own right, even if Donald's is handling ahead. How so? Fishback has done a lot of things, said a lot of things that in a decade ago, certainly would have maybe just put you out of the mainstream of politics altogether. Now these are campaigns that I think they work. It's difficult to attract attention in the time that we're in right now. There are a million competing messages. Traditional news media, ways of reaching people that you used to be able to do a decade ago. It's just not that easy anymore. So in order to break through, I think your messaging has to seem very unique. You have to be kind of a colorful personality. You have to be attracting specific demographics. I have seen, at least in terms of a ground game, there's been more people marching around with signs, more people, you know, younger people walking around, touting fishback stuff. I have not seen really much of a ground game at all for Susan Collins and Renner. So fishback is doing it. But again, the audience he's trying to attract is precisely the audience. It's very difficult to pull out. If you're a registered Democrat, there are a lot of names on the ballot, but it certainly seems as though David Jolly, the former Republican and member of the U.S. House. Again, this is his race to lose. Is that the general assumption going into this? Yeah, I mean, I think even more so than Byron Donalds's, especially because there's so many other names listed there, you know, maybe in an extreme unlikelyhood, if there's just one other name that could potentially be on there, maybe Jolly, you know, sweats it by 40 points instead of 70 points. But the other candidates kind of cancel each other out again without that ability to in front of the public draw clear ideological distinctions. Jolly is perceived, obviously, as much more of a moderate runner for the Democrats.

than any of the other candidates would be. But, you know, if you have a sort of five-way break between people that might represent more of the base of the party, that's going to make it really difficult for them to compete against Jolly. So I think it's clearly his to lose. I want to talk about the landscape of Florida as we move into the general election ahead of November and the early voting that'll begin in late October. But before we get that far, there are some other key primaries of note. The U.S. Senate race, the incumbent Ashley Moody, does have a primary. If I'm not mistaken, this would actually be her first. contested election as the senator since she was appointed. So a number of names, Ashley Moody, Chris Gleason, Nealem Perry, Ernest Rivera, Sean Frieder, our political expert is, is this Ashley Moody's to win pretty easily? It is as well. I mean, there's no real reason why the party would want to move away from Moody at the moment. I think that, you know, going into the general, you're going to hear more about her connection to Hope Florida. That's kind of the elephant in the room there. But again, I haven't heard a lot of noise within the actual Republican primary, so I don't think These other three candidates have been able to really effectively attack her on that. And I think she's kind of just going to swim through the primary and the general. The most interesting, perhaps, is the Democratic primary. Yes. State House Democrat Angie Nixon against Alex Vindman. And Jake, what's your early read on that one? Or do we have much of a read on that? I haven't seen much polling of them in a head-to-head. But we did have the recent UNF poll that... backed up some other polls I've seen that show that she may actually be slightly more viable against Moody than Vindman would be. But I think what Angie Nixon's going to run into is the drastic... difference in how much they've been able to fundraise. Vindman is honestly competitive, if not even beating Ashley Moody in fundraising in certain quarters. As Angie Nixon, I think, has struggled to even get a million dollars into the campaign coffers. But Nixon, again, kind of like fishback, is creative in generating attention and, you know, free media, if you will. Obviously, the sit-in at the governor's office, she's held two protests on the house floor when she was in the house, although I guess technically she's still in the house. And then even very recently, Vindman's wife made a comment about presumably Nixon's way of dressing. And then she posted a video that went pretty viral talking about how she shops at Goodwill. And, you know, she bought her car on Facebook marketplace. And, you know, she's definitely got more that grassroots. She's got some endorsements from Congressman Frost in central Florida and some other progressives in the Florida House. So, I mean. I guess it'll be, we're seeing, you know, in other races throughout the country where, you know, some of these primaries are going to the candidates that are more unabashedly progressive. Maybe we see that here. I don't know if Florida's ready for that. I haven't seen Florida go that way, you know, statewide. And the general election, I mean, it'll be interesting to see. Like I said, like you mentioned, our poll shows that, you know, Vindman, I think, is trying to make the case for Democrats that he's the one that can actually beat Ashley Moody. Our most recent polling doesn't show that he.

has any kind of a significant advantage there. Polling back in February, we specifically went for name recognition because if Vindman has one advantage other than the money, it's the name recognition potentially, but we found that he didn't actually have that much more name recognition relative to Nixon, so even that advantage wasn't really there. I think this is definitely the most interesting primary of any of these races. We don't have polling on it. It's difficult to put together a poll just for one Democratic primary race, which is why we didn't do it, but I think this one could be very close. This is sort of your classic story of Vindman has more of the establishment backing, has more of the money, but Nixon has the base support, the roots. And again, like Jake said, fishback, that style of getting your name in the news by finding ways other than spending money to do so is not just an alternative, but I think increasingly a primary way to get your name out there. And Nixon's done really well with that. So I could see either of them potentially winning in that race. Sean, to Jake's point earlier, we have seen... whether you call it a wave or not. But we've seen in other state primaries so far this season that more progressive and even Democratic socialists have succeeded in this campaign. Is this the closest it is Angie Nixon along that line? Is this the closest Florida might get to that, at least in 2026? I think that's probably fair to say. Nixon is probably as close as you're going to get to that in the state of Florida. Again, we find right now the numbers between her and Vindman that would go into the general are pretty close. But that's again before the money machine turns on. before people really start paying attention and start listening to the advertising campaign. So it's possible that Nixon might be too far to the left for Florida once that money kicks in. On the other hand, she's probably the candidate that's most likely to animate people in the base. One thing that kind of throws a wrench in that is that Vindman does, you know, his name recognition is around Trump's first impeachment. So if you are someone that's maybe very animated on the left, but you're not necessarily in an ideological way. You just are very upset with Trump. Vindman is still an off ramp for you in a way to the law. These other candidates haven't been in other states. Still to come, if any sitting Florida lawmakers are on upset alert and the role AI data centers could play as we head into the fall.

We're back with the Florida primary primer on 104.5 WOKV. I'm Rich Jay Jones alongside Action News Jack State and local government reporter Jake Stofan and WOKV political analyst Sean Frieder, the director of the public opinion research lab at the University of North Florida. Jake you cover state and local government. And we just left off talking about Angie Nixon running for the Democratic primary in the U.S. Senate. So her seat becomes open. And we've got some well-known Democrat names who are seeking to win in that primary. Reggie Gaffney, Audrey Gibson, Leslie Jean Bart. How has that race been shaping up over the last several weeks leading up to this primary? Seeing Aubrey Gibson, former senator, former representative, going. vying for the house once again is certainly interesting to see. She's got a lot of name recognition. She's served, you know, communities in Jacksonville for many, many years. I believe she's also winning the fundraising battle, which in those smaller races, that that amount of money can certainly make a difference, especially if you already have the advantage of name recognition. But, you know, Reggie Gaffney, he himself is also quite well known in the community. John Bart, don't know how much of a contender she necessarily is in this, although she's gotten her name in the news talking about the community benefits agreement and aligning herself with some of the groups that have been involved in that. Also taking... some shots at, you know, sitting city council members. She was one of the ones that filed the complaint about the text that was sent from the dais in the middle of a council meeting. So she's certainly kind of remains active and, and there's a chance some people maybe have picked up on it. But. perhaps not so much as, you know, being a sitting elected official for several years. Do either of you see any state, sitting state house members who are on upset alert at all? I don't think so, again, without polling, it's difficult to tell in a low turnout environment, especially once you go down to the lower level races. Interesting things can happen. I think Florida Congressional District 5 could potentially be interesting. Again, all of these are long shots. The incumbents usually have an overwhelming advantage at this stage if the party hasn't. already abandoned them. And there's no signs that the party is interested in pivoting away from Rutherford. State House District 17, the incumbent is Republican, Jessica Baker. You do have a Democrat primary, Jacob Guerrero against Bryson Morgan. District 18. The incumbent Republican is Kim Kendall and her challenger, Diana Jim Jordan Baldwin, the Democrats feature Heather Ann Smith and Art stressing. You mentioned congressional districts. Florida congressional district four features the Republican incumbent Aaron Bean, and he does not have a challenger. And Jake, you look at the Democrats we've seen. seen L.J. Holloway's name on ballots before alongside Michael Kerwin and Britt Robinson as well. But L.J. Holloway has been in this position before. Yes, and not fared so well in the general election. I don't necessarily see why that would.

change in this race. Aaron Bean won pretty handedly in 2024 and also in 2022. This is his third go around and Holloway has kind of been his main competitor. Again, I think, you know, the fundraising race is. easily goes to Bean. Bean has been serving that general area for a very long time as a state House representative, as a state senator. He obviously has the backing of the president, or at least has in the past. I'm from Clay County. It's a pretty conservative area. So is Nassau. There is a part of Jacksonville included in that, but obviously during redistricting, they kind of balanced it out to ensure that was going to be a safe Republican seat. don't necessarily see that changing. Michael Kerwin, I've seen his name a lot. He's certainly spending a lot of money. I'm seeing advertisements for him. But. have not seen him necessarily break into the news cycle in any significant way. So, you know, the primary there may be interesting. If Kerwin ends up pulling it out over Holloway, maybe he becomes sort of the de facto challenger to Bean. As we bring it down to the city of Jacksonville, it is an even year, but we do have a special election. And this is to fill the at-large Group 1 vacancy as Terrence Freeman is seeking a state office. Jake, at the local level, we've seen a lot of TV. campaigning by Monet Holder. Is there much bubbling up with the other names in this race? Deborah Wesley, who's the Republican candidate and Addison Liberty Patrick, the libertarian candidate, have actually probably been at each other more than Holder and Wesley have, despite Holder, obviously, being the Democrat and Wesley being the Republican. You've seen a lot of... back and forth court challenges with Wesley originally going after Patrick for potentially not having changed or party registration to independent in time to comply with a new state law. Ultimately, Wesley did not win that court challenge. It doesn't apply to these open primaries, only closed primaries. So Patrick secured a win in court there, was able to stay on the ballot, but then has countersued Wesley. challenging her residency. That challenge has also not really gone anywhere at this point, but I'm hearing many things behind the scenes that, oh, you know, there's this detail. You know, we're going to rechallenge. Somebody's going to file a new lawsuit. We'll see where it goes. But I think after the whole fishback residency controversy panned out the way it did and things that were said during that particular. court hearing. I would be surprised to see a residency challenge actually result in somebody being removed from the ballot, especially this late in the game. Still to come, the crowded field of candidates vying for a seat on the Duval County School Board and why growth has become a flashpoint for races in one local county.

Welcome back to this Florida primary primer on 104.5 WOKV. I'm Rich Jay Jones alongside Action News Jack's state and local government reporter Jake Stofan and WOKV political analyst Sean Frieder, the director of the public opinion research lab at the University of North Florida. School board races matter, and three that are up in Duval County will ultimately matter, and ultimately three might go to runoffs. District 2, District 4, and District 6. This is April Carney's seat, Daryl Willie, and Charlotte Joyce. So we're going to see change on the Duval County School Board, and is any one of these likely to win outright as you look at the field right now, Sean? I don't necessarily think so. I mean, again, these are very low-level races. Now, if this was 5, 10 years ago when school board had a lot less funding, a lot less party interest behind it, I would say almost certainly we're just naturally going to be headed to runoffs because it's just you're going to have no one able to get to that 50%. Now that there's some more money, more interest behind it, you know, it's possible that someone runs a campaign, even a couple weeks right now is, you know, early voting starts before it happens. If all of a sudden someone's name pops out there, people get interested, someone could pop above 50, but I really think it's probably headed in all cases to a November race. Clay County has seen a lot of challenges over the last year, and there were three school board races in Clay County, the incumbent Aaron Skipper for just... District 1 faces Laura Libretto, School Board District 4, the incumbent Michelle Hansen against Michael Rathgen and School Board District 5. The incumbent is Ashley Gilhousen and faces two challengers, Gerald Beasley and Veronica Jerome Powell Faison. At the local level, an incumbent has a record to run on and a legacy perhaps to run on as well. Might these incumbents be facing any significant challenges? It's, again, very difficult to say, as you say, at this level, there's no polling. There's really, you know, you get a loose sense of the ground game, but that. That's it. Again, even though I just said that, you know, AI and technology presents an opportunity to run on a different dimension in some of these races, it's also very attractive if you're running against an incumbent to challenge them on their record. And the record's not going to be technology and AI. Their record is going to be book bans, as you said. So I think that that's where the action is in terms of whether or not that's going to actually generate any potential for them against the incumbent. It's too granular to tell, at least for me. Clay County voters will, at least in District 2, face a county commissioner's race, Leroy. Edwards against Lolita Smoke. We turn our attention to St. John's County. There are a few school board races. The incumbent Beverly Slau faces Kevin Allen in District 4. The incumbent Kelly Barrera is not seeking re-election. There are three candidates, Leif Johansson, the third, Tammy McClafferty and Julian Tozer. Jake, a lot of the attention is focused on the county commission races. Commission District 4, the incumbent Krista Keating Joseph against James Galloway and Sam Williams. And perhaps the most intriguing one involves District 2. Sarah Arnold's seat. You've got four candidates who are looking to at least position themselves for what will likely be a November runoff, but it's the background of St. John's County that's created so much news and headlines of late. Yeah, when you have, well, although Sarah Arnold is not running for re-election, so it's kind of an open seat. But, you know, you do kind of seemingly have two different camps of conservatives who are really kind of the only ones who are viable in St. John's County just based on the voting demographics. but you have the anti-growth Republicans and you have the pro-growth Republicans. And the pro-growth Republicans have found themselves in quite a bit of trouble lately, especially with two of the county commissioner, Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst, both being indicted and charged with...

helping to create this fake voter guide that was passed out ahead of the 2024 primary election. And we heard people come up to the county commission meeting and express a lot of outrage and disdain for those particular commissioners over their alleged actions in that. whole scheme. You know, you also have other groups like the Republican Assembly of St. John's County putting out their own voter guides. They seem to be more supportive of the anti-growth candidates like Christina Joseph. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if we see the county head more towards that anti-growth Republican wing. And you mentioned Krista Keating Joseph. All of her advertising that I've seen, at least on television on CBS 47 and Fox 30 has been about. we're growing too fast and the need to slow down growth. Sean, I know you're connected in some ways having served as moderator for some conversations, debates and public forums. So while you can't necessarily put a read on it, big picture, is growth the overwhelming issue in St. John's County? Overwhelming. You know, I think... The issue of, you know, the endorsements would already have attracted some fireworks. But the fact that you can pretty much directly attach this to the growth debate that's happening there is pretty important. Without polling, it's difficult to tell anything. But, you know, having sat in that room, that's the next best thing and be able to see what the ground game looks like, you know, the people showing up to watch these forums or the people that are, you know, be indicative of the average voter that's going to be driving these races. And, you know, the feeling for me in that room was overwhelmingly anti-growth. I think, you know, even the candidates that might have been a bit more pro-growth, trying to pull those. punches. So growth is, I think, pretty much the entire story there right now. And if you do want to have a look at the candidates at your sample ballot, we've created our voter guide at WOKV.com as a resource. You can search by county and then ultimately get down to your address and see that ballot and the sample ballot that you'll be filling in the circle, whether it's early or on August 18th. Before we go, I want to get your read on what is set up for November. And Sean Frieder from the state perspective, who emerges either Angie Nixon or Alex Vinner. as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate will face Ashley Moody. What might be the biggest issues that we can anticipate in that Senate in the general election over the rest of summer and into fall? So assuming our numbers are about in the right place. Again, we have Moody, you know, Moody, you know, going against Nixon or Vindman, Nixon and Vindman by 8, 10 points, respectively. That's within the margin of error. So at the very least, Vindman has a difficult time making the case that he overwhelmingly is going to have better odds against a Moody. I think that both, whichever Democratic candidate makes it out of that, they're going to want to make hay of Hope Florida. I think that's potentially where Moody's most vulnerable. It's also just seeing how much they can ride a generally anti-incumbent and potentially more Democratic-influency. wave going into November. So being eight, 10 points out, if those numbers hold, that's a tall order for them to be able to get into the truly competitive space. In the governor's race, we have more of a five-point separation. So I think that, you know, if turnout goes in the way of Democrats there, Jolly is really sitting there, you know, with, I think a real chance to turn this competitive. I think Nixon and Binman are just behind him in that. So they have a harder time in front of them to make it competitive. But unlike Donald's potentially, you know, if Hope Florida resonates with voters and they start spending on.

that that's potentially an interesting message. Jake, what's your read as we move into the rest of summer and into fall, the races and the issues that are going to matter? You know, one of the issues that's come up a lot in the Republican gubernatorial primary, and I've also heard David Jolly mentioned it several times, is this debate over data centers, right? Three of the Republican candidates. Susan Collins, Renner, and Fishback all say we need a data center moratorium statewide. We need to severely roll this back or Runner even says we need to ban them. But with Donald's, he's got a very, very different message. He has straight up said, I want Florida to be a leader on data centers. I think this provides great economic opportunities. And I don't think that Florida would be wise to let this opportunity pass us by because some other state may. But Jolly is more in that fishback renter Susan Collins camp saying that, you know, we do need to put a pause on data centers. And. This is a very animating issue. You know, it's easy for me to go get some man on the street interviews about data centers because everybody has an opinion about them. And I don't know if I've spoken with any random person who said, yeah, let's get more data centers. It sounds like a great idea. So, you know, that could be one of those weird, unifying issues that maybe Donald's support of allowing data centers to come into the state, even if it's at a limited or slowed down capacity. know, could isolate him from some of the GOP-based voters. And, you know, a lot of the independents may swing more towards Jolly on that. It just really kind of depends on how high on the totem pole of importance this is for voters. Yeah, I think that AI data centers could really be Jolly's honestly best opportunity to get into this race, especially with independents. But really across the board, as Jake said, we did some polling on AI data centers in our most recent poll. It's been a long time since I've seen something that generates this level of universal hatred across parties. It truly is a bipartisan thing. It's across every sub-demographic. Age, gender, race, education, class, et cetera. Data centers are just extremely unpopular. And Donald's may have jumped out on something that he was trying to think of more as like a typical Republican, pro-growth, pro-development kind of issue. But this has really resonated with voters in the last several months in a very different way. If Jolly can really hammer him on AI data centers, I think that that's potential. a huge issue. Do you anticipate that he would be hammering him early to get attention on him and then focus on your more bread and butter issues on the economy, affordability, housing, insurance, property taxes, things like that? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a strong strategy. You know, people like talking about data centers. So that's how you get your foot in the door in terms of name recognition. Even though David Jolly is a pretty well-known politician, there's still some indications I've seen in polling that Jolly's name recognition is maybe not where they'd like it to be. And the belief of the campaign certainly is that once that name recognition goes up, he's going to be very competitive against Donald. So AI is a great way to get your name out there. But ultimately, I think every candidate across the country, they better have a really good message on affordability or they're going to be in trouble because that's really what voters. And again, in both parties care about. Maybe Democrats and Republicans talk about what they mean by affordability in different ways. We found that in our polling. Democrats tend to be talking about inflation and lower wages. Republicans tend to focus more on property tax and property insurance. But either way, everyone has to have a message on affordability. What role do you anticipate Ron DeSantis playing in a potential?

Thank you for joining WOKV for our special coverage of the August primaries and special elections. I'm Christine Bellino, the news director here at WOKV, and I recently sat with the supervisors of elections for Clay, Duval, Duval, and St. John's counties. Jerry Holland represents Duval. Vicki Oaks serves St. John's County and Chris Chambliss oversees elections for Clay County. So what are some of the biggest misconceptions that your office hears every election? We'll start with you, Jerry Holland. Well, specifically in primaries, is there? Most voters are thinking only the two major parties can vote. And that's not the case. There are races on everyone's ballot typically that are for everyone. Example, school board races, judicial races. So primaries are not just for the two major parties. And I think that's an important thing because we see the no party affiliation group. and the minor parties, a lot of times stay home during the primary. And we encourage them, please participate in this election. Some races will actually be over in the primary and never make it to the November election. And just to be clear, so our voters know and our listeners know, and we hope everybody in our listening audience is registered to vote, but there is a difference between an NPA and an independent. Yeah, a lot of people say, you know, I don't want to be part of the two major parties. I want to be independent. Well, independent is actually there is a party, the independent party of Florida. So there are parties called independent. But if you want to be just absence of any party. then you're an NPA, which is a no-party affiliation registration. And so there is a difference. So you have to be careful if you register and say, and I want to be independent, there are parties labeled independent, but if you want to be without any party affiliation, then that's at NPA, no-party affiliation. An increasing number of NPAs. Without a doubt, in Duval County, we have 129,000 NPAs. It is often sometimes the fastest growing group, and especially when we register, we go to all the high schools and also naturalization ceremonies. A lot of people aren't sure which party they want to belong to. So that's probably a lot of times their first introduction to being a registered voter is, well, I'm not sure. Let me just register without a party affiliation. Because, again, in the state of Florida, you can change your party as many times as you want to, just have to do it at least 29 days prior to the election. And you can only vote. If you are voting in a primary, you can only vote one time. You can't vote one time, then change your party affiliation, then vote again. That is correct. That party affiliation that you have prior to that cut off on Monday is the party that you will vote in the election coming up. And if you're an NPA, you cannot vote in a primary? No, that's the key. You can vote in the primary for races that are either universal, which means they don't have opposition in a partisan primary in November.

or in races that are nonpartisan or municipal races, those also are available to the NPA voters. School board races and judicial races are available to NPA voters. Chris, what about misconceptions that you hear? So I think one of the biggest ones for me is that they only count the vote by mail ballots if the election is close. And so that's, it's typically it's the first ballot that's counted, number one. Number two, one of the misconceptions that I hear, well, I don't want to vote by mail or even early voting because I don't want people to see how I'm voting. And all ballots that are cast are ballots that are cast privately. We, even in the elections office, have no way of knowing how you voted because, of course, that ballot is not tied to. an individual for that. And so they will say, well, I don't want. you know, even parties or campaigns to know how well another candidate is doing. And that information is just not publicly available. So that's one of the biggest things that we hear. And again, we want to encourage I vote by mail. My family votes by mail because I can't go to the polling location on Election Day. My duties prevent that at that time. But I think that it's important for individuals, whatever the method, we have tried to take away all of the stumbling blocks and give you. access to voting like never before with with again depending on the election cycle up to a week to two weeks of early voting 45 days of voting by mail and then of course the 12 hour period on election day there is no reason for anyone not to cast their ballot and vicky So since you're a St. John's County voter, I do want to mention what Jerry's already mentioned about our NPA voters because, Jerry, you mentioned universal primary contest. We have two on our ballot in St. John's County. Our two county commissioners are up for election. They are going to be elected in this. primary election very important because of the fact that only Republicans qualified for both offices that opens up as a universal primary contest and those two Republican races are going to appear not only on the Republican ballot but also the Democrat and the nonpartisan ballots, and everyone in St. John's County will be eligible to vote if they're registered and elect our county commissioners. Interesting. One of the things I know that you wanted to talk about was audits. What are audits, and how are they conducted? Okay, there's two ways to conduct audits on our elections. And what is an audit for? Okay, an audit is a review, and in our case,

a retabulation of the ballots cast in the election. Is that always done? Yes. Actually, Florida has been auditing our elections since 2007, and many states have been auditing their elections for years. In Florida, there's two different ways you can conduct a manual audit. Or like St. John's County in 23, we purchased an independent auditing system that we bought and maintained, which is completely a separate system. And our ballots are run through our tabulation system. That's system one. And then they are also run through the independent auditing system. The results are available there following the election, and then the audit is a comparison of the two. And what we found in St. John's County, we began auditing our elections 100%. In 2024, we've had five elections now. Two of them have been 100%. And we've had one that was 99.996% accurate. And that's about the ballpark they usually are. So our audits confirm the accuracy of our results and also confirm the fact. that our results have not been changed. So that was one of the things that you were talking about, Chris, when you said that the elections need to be 100% accurate. Yeah, you know, of course, Florida, the primary method of voting is on paper. So we can reconduct the election over and over and over again if need be up to 22 months out. That's the retention period for the material itself. But it's important to note that the independent auditing system is a separate system, separate manufacturer. separate technology and so it's really able to take the accuracy of the election to again a level that's never been seen before not only that is we're able to visually show the system is able to visually show the variations of how people mark their ballot And so that's very important for that. And again, with having a paper-based system, I know that there's a lot of conspiracy. Thereists that are concerned with the transmission. Some will say that it's transmitted across the internet. It never touches the internet. It is a secured, separate communication system that's heavily encrypted to the point that most your bank law.

again. When you go online to your banking, that's a 128-bit encryption. Our encryption is a 1,028-bit encryption, so it's much higher for that. And again, it enables us to verify and re-verify not only each ballot, not only each contest, but each mark on the ballot. One of the things that is important for people to realize is that the balloting itself has changed significantly over the years. I joke in the broadcasting industry that there are many of us who have gone from splicing tape with razors to now the digital age. Things have transformed in the election space as well. Does every county in Florida have the same type of ballot? Well, in the state of Florida, we cannot, as supervisors, go out and say, you know, we're going to buy this equipment or we've seen it in another state. All the equipment in the state of Florida has to go through the process of certification, through the division of elections, overseen by the Secretary of State. And so only equipment that has been certified by the state can we purchase. And so in that sense, we're consistent. In the state of Florida, there's two voting systems that is being used, you know, but from a standpoint, we can't independently go out and select our own voting system. Okay. So if people... don't know how to, you know, some older folks might be afraid of, you know, computer technologies and things like that. There are people there to hold their hand and help them with that. Without a doubt. I mean, you know, as we get voters, and we get excited both for our senior voters, which are often our super voters, one thing that we've always noticed is the older our voter gets, the more likely they will come to vote. You know, but what also is exciting is our first-time voters. That's something we all recognize when they come in, you know, maybe an 18 or not. 19-year-old coming in for the first time. But we make over them just as much as we do our senior voters. And you can find all of the information that you need to know before heading to the polls in our voter guide at WOKV.com and of course in the WOKV app. And our news team will provide live election results as they roll in on election night with WOKV's Chase Bunker and we'll analyze all of the results the next morning on Jacksonville's morning news with Rich Jay Jones and in depth with me, Christine Bolino. From all of us at WOK. Thank you for listening and for being a well-informed voter.