Wellington leaders have begun discussing whether to change or drop a runoff election requirement if the leading vote-getter attracts less than 35 percent of the vote in a municipal election, after six-figure runoff costs hit the village in the 2024 council races.
In a workshop on Thursday, April 3, Wellington Village Council members encouraged village staff to proceed with drafting various measures to clarify the qualifying period for local candidates and the make-up of a local canvassing board, if that were needed in special circumstances. Those would come up as formal voting matters before the council later.
The runoff discussion, though, generated a wide variety of opinions, if not a clear consensus. An initial option was for staff to pursue rules to eliminate the runoff entirely.
For now, members decided to put off considering a new policy on that issue until after the state legislative session ends in May, followed by the governor’s veto period, in case Tallahassee sets down rules that could change the debate.
Still, some members made clear they do want to talk about it, whether that means eliminating runoffs, or just lowering the percentage of votes needed to trigger one.
“I’d like to discuss this further,” said Councilwoman Amanda Silvestri, who faced a runoff in a four-way race in her election to the council. “I think I’d be very comfortable lowering the percentage. I think I got 31 percent and still had to go into a runoff, and that was very frustrating.”
She suggested a lower threshold.
“Maybe we could do 30 percent instead of getting rid of it altogether,” Silvestri said.
Not everyone agreed.
“I wouldn’t want to go below 35 percent, because that means 65 percent of the people voted against the person who got 35 percent,” Mayor Michael Napoleone said.
One consideration in all this is the cost. Other government election entities typically absorb the tab on election days that also have other local, state, federal or judicial races, or ballot questions, but municipalities can take the brunt when they open the polls more or less alone. Wellington spent $118,119.25 on 2024 runoff activity, village officials said.
At the same time, the issue presents some basic questions about what seems just and fair. If a race attracts a big field of candidates, is it OK for the top vote-getter to win, even if that means a sizable majority of voters didn’t choose that person?
“If there were 10 candidates, can a candidate that gets 11 percent win?” Councilman John McGovern asked.
The answer seems to be yes for municipalities without a runoff provision.
Fourteen of Palm Beach County’s 39 municipalities require a runoff if a candidate does not reach 50 percent of the vote, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link said.
A 15th municipality, Wellington, sets that threshold at 35 percent, she said at the workshop.
“The rest say top vote-getter wins no matter what,” Link said.
Wellington initially had a runoff requirement with a 50 percent threshold, but lowered it to 35 percent through a ballot referendum in 2010.
Apart from runoff requirements, state rules require a recount if the winning margin is below a certain amount.
Four or five of the county’s municipalities are reviewing their charters and considering dropping a runoff requirement based on feedback she is hearing, Link said.
The last round of Wellington elections featured as many as five candidates per seat, as was the case for Councilwoman Maria Antuña, in a race that eventually saw her seated on the council after a runoff. Antuña also received 31 percent of the initial vote, triggering the runoff.
One wild card is a bill in the state legislature that could require municipalities to hold their elections in November of even-numbered years, in order to avoid low-turnout local elections. Observers don’t necessarily expect that to pass this session, but if it did, it could make it difficult to hold runoffs at all.
Napoleone said he wanted to “kick the can down the road” at least a short distance, until after the legislative session.
In other election matters, Link said that Palm Beach County has experienced swings in voter registrations among its total population of 1.5 million people.
Breaking out registered voters, about 36 percent countywide are Democrats, 33 percent are Republicans, and 31 percent are registered to no party or other parties, she said. That represents about a 5 percent loss for Democrats and corresponding gain for Republicans over five years, with the no/other party contingent staying about the same.
In Wellington itself, the breakdown is currently 35 percent for Republicans, 32 percent for Democrats, and 33 percent no/other parties, she said.
The largest bloc of Wellington voters, more than 16,000, cast ballots in early voting in Wellington in the 2024 general election. More than 9,000 voted by mail, and more than 7,000 on election day, she said.
Think of all the money we could save if we moved our election to November.