Election 2026
The Escambia elections supervisor walks through the late ballots, the hand count and the 62 military and overseas ballots still out in the 14-vote Hofberger-Vinson race.
The machine recount in the Escambia County Commission District 4 race matched the published results 100%, and the manual recount assigned seven more votes: six for Commissioner Ashlee Hofberger and one for NPA candidate Joe Vinson. That leaves a 14-vote margin, which Supervisor of Elections Robert Bender said is the closest race in Florida right now.
What’s left are the military and overseas ballots. Bender’s office has received nine District 4 ballots, with 62 still outstanding, as of noon Monday, Nov. 9.
- They will be opened and counted Friday, Nov. 13, the 10-day deadline.
Bender joined me on We Don’t Color on the Dog to explain how his office got here.
The “Found” Ballots
Bender pushed back on the idea that ballots were “found” as polls closed on election night.
What happened: Staff shut down intake to get ready for 7 p.m. That meant the last ballots to arrive weren’t processed until later that night.
- The postmaster brought in 149 ballots around 6 p.m., after the office’s last mail run of the day.
- Other postal workers dropped off one, two or three ballots at a time to make sure they arrived before 7 p.m.
- More than 200 ballots were turned in at the downtown SOE office on Election Day.
Those ballots made up the 655 votes added late Tuesday and early Wednesday—162 of them were in District 4.
Provisionals and Cures
The office handled a little over 200 provisional ballots.
Provisionals: In a few cases, poll records showed a voter had already checked in when they hadn’t. Another voter had been checked in under the wrong name by mistake. Staff sorted it out so both voters got credit and both votes counted. Other provisionals came from voters who forgot their ID, registered late or weren’t registered. One was a hurricane recovery worker from out of town.
Cures: These are vote-by-mail ballots where the signature doesn’t appear to match the one on file. Two staff members review each one. Rejected signatures go to the three-member canvassing board, which reviewed them on Thursday, Nov. 5 with attorneys for both campaigns watching.
“Every time a District 4 ballot came up, we would show the signature under the document lens, and they could compare it to what we were comparing them to.”
Bender said the canvassing board agreed on every decision. The attorneys may have disagreed on one or two.
The Machine Recount
Before the recount could start, staff had to pull roughly 26,000 District 4 ballots out of everything cast countywide. Voters can use any early voting site, so District 4 ballots were mixed in with ballots from the rest of the county.
Sorting took all day Friday and ran close to 3 a.m. Staff kept pre-sorting early-vote batches on Saturday while the machine recount was already running.
The result: A 100% match with the numbers the office had already published.
The machines set aside ballots they couldn’t count in the District 4 race for the hand count:
- 681 undervotes: no vote read in the District 4 race
- 6 overvotes: marks that look like votes for more than one candidate
Where the Seven Votes Came From
The canvassing board followed state guidelines on voter intent to decide every ballot set aside by the machines.
Two overvotes:
- A Hofberger voter left a stray pen mark in Vinson’s oval. Vote for Hofberger.
- A voter filled in Hofberger, crossed it out with an X and filled in Vinson. Vote for Vinson.
Five undervotes, all for Hofberger:
- Two voters circled the party name instead of filling in the oval.
- Two voters filled in the party name instead of the oval.
- One voter clipped the edge of the oval but put most of the mark above it.
“Seven votes changed from what the machine had done, but we’re able to go back and look at every one of them, and it’s more of a voter error than a tabulation error.”
The Overseas Ballots
Military and overseas civilian ballots must be postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3, and reach the elections office within 10 days.
- District 4: 9 received, 62 outstanding. One arrived the day we talked.
- Countywide: 25 received since Election Day
- Party breakdown: Three of the first eight District 4 ballots came from Republicans. Bender didn’t yet know the party of the ninth ballot received early Monday.
Bender expects the rest to arrive in single digits each day.
The customs ballot: One ballot has been stuck at customs in Jamaica, New York, for about 28 days. The voter gave the office a tracking number, which staff passed to USPS. Bender’s office has also asked Congressman Jimmy Patronis’ office for help.
What’s next: The canvassing board opens the overseas ballots on Friday, Nov. 13. Bender said he won’t close the count early. He will check with USPS for any truck arriving after the morning Jacksonville delivery, so the final tally may not come until that evening.
A 15-Person Staff
Bender texted me the hand count results around 3 a.m. Sunday. Six staff members were still in the building with him.
The election supervisor credited procedures put in place after the 2025 special elections, including how the office reconciles ballots and names its files across systems. Staff found nearly 16,000 District 4 ballots among more than 68,000 early-vote and vote-by-mail ballots without missing a batch. The count reconciled around midnight Saturday.
“Really, my job is to protect the integrity of the office… The security around elections is to have that transparency, and so we’re committed to that.”
