Southern Recreation Center in Palm Coast Added as Fifth Early Voting Site

In preparation for a very high turnout during this Presidential Election, the Flagler County Supervisor of Elections will opened a new early voting site at Palm Coast’s Southern Recreation Center, at 1290 Belle Terre Parkway, Palm Coast, bringing the total of early voting sites to five in Flagler County. The addition is in expectation of a heavy-turnout election and in response to a growing population.




There were 79,349 registered voters in Flagler County in the 2016 election. There were 92,000 registered voters in the 2020 election. The number of net new voters has slowed considerably–and inexplicably: There will be around 96,000 registered voters by the time the registration window closes on Monday. (Yes: you only have until 5 p.m. Monday to register, if you haven’t done so.) Florida supervisors are now required to purge voter rolls every year.

There were 28,537 early voters in 2020, or 40 percent of ballots cast. Mail-in ballots were the favored way of voting during that year of Covid, with 44 percent of ballots cast that way. Just 16 percent of voters went to the polls on election day. Legislating making it more difficult to vote by mail, and the return of pandemic-free times, might have lessened the disproportion. But based on the Aug. 20 primary results, it hasn’t: 44 percent of voters cast their ballot by mail, though far fewer voted early: 27 percent (compared to 40 percent in 2020).

“It’s the first time we’ve had five early voting locations, so this is really exciting,” Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhart said.



+
The voting booths will be in the all-purpose room on the second floor of the Recreation Center (where Zumba classes are usually held), accessible by elevator or stairs. Palm Coast Parks and Recreation Director James Hirst said there are not expected to be any disruptions to Recreation center activities except for perhaps some rescheduling of an occasional activity–if that. Outside, as in other voting locations, electioneering will be prohibited within a 150-foot radius, but candidates and their volunteers will be free to solicit outside of that boundary, as they might at other voting locations. “I will produce an aerial view so that candidates and their volunteers can see the 150-foot no solicitation zone,” Lenhart said.

The county’s early voting locations had started with the supervisor’s office at the Government Services Building in Bunnell, the public library on Palm Coast Parkway and the Palm Coast Community Center, also on Palm Coast Parkway. In 2020 the supervisor’s office added Flagler Beach United Methodist Church.

Parking is a concern at almost every early voting site. So it is at the Southern Recreation Center. “Unfortunately, we do not have facilities with adequate parking in Flagler County,” Lenhart said. There will be 15 reserved voter parking spaces at the Recreation Center, where the circle drive area near the entrance was recently closed to parking due to safety concerns. The lot design failure will be resolved in the center’s Phase 2 parking expansion and will be ready for future election years. Peak hours are expected from 10 a.m. to noon, so if you can avoid the rush, plan to vote in the afternoon.




As for pickleball and tennis club players: they’re urged to plan ahead for parking congestion–and to be respectful of the reserved voter parking spaces. “This early voting site will be open for only two weeks during a historic election cycle,” Lenhart said. “With your patience and accommodation for the electoral process, I feel we can all work together and this can be a win for all residents and the voters of Flagler County.”

Lenhart was touting the addition of the Recreation center as a way for people who have not yet seen it to experience it for the first time. It may eventually become an election-day precinct. “With our growth we will have to expand our precincts so it’s very likely it will become a precinct in the future, because if it’s already an early voting site it’s easy to convert it too an election-day voting location,” Lenhart said.

Early voting begins on Oct. 21 and will stretch just short of two weeks, to Nov. 2, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. But voting has already begun: as of today (Oct. 1) the supervisor’s office had received 497 mail-in ballots.

Anticipating long lines, Lenhart said voters should prepare before they get to a voting site, even during early voting. “The sample ballot is double sided, it is absolutely filled, there’s federal state, local city, there’s a lot of races, there’s six proposed constitutional amendments,” Lenhart said. “So there’s paragraphs people have to read to make an informed decision. We are encouraging voters to use that sample ballot, and use that time now to research the candidates and research the issues, and that’ll save a lot of time for everybody during these potentially long lines during early voting and election day. I don’t want anyone to read the amendments for the first time in the voting booth.”