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Supervisor of Elections warns of polling-location and storage shortfalls as county grows
Summary
Hernando County Supervisor of Elections Denise Lavancher told commissioners the office lacks adequate polling locations and has a state-identified unconditioned warehouse for election equipment, and she outlined preparations for training and early voting as population rises.
Denise Lavancher, Hernando County's supervisor of elections, told the Board of County Commissioners on June 18 that rapid population growth has strained the elections office's ability to find polling and early-voting locations in fast-growing areas of the county.
Lavancher said some new neighborhoods along U.S. 19 and in areas such as Ridge Manor and Royal Highlands have "literally" outgrown available polling sites. She said the office sometimes relies on churches or other community facilities but has logistical limits for using schools—"Logistics cannot be during school time"—noting parking, security and children on campus as complicating factors for in-session school use.
On storage, Lavancher said the county's only unconditioned warehouse is used for other county needs and that election equipment is kept in air-conditioned storage; she put on the record that the county warehouse itself is unconditioned. The supervisor said equipment storage and adequate facilities will be increasingly important as the county grows and the office scales from a small year-round staff to hundreds of temporary workers during elections.
Lavancher described staff plans to consolidate poll-worker training at Springstead's auditorium to reduce repeated training sessions and to test more centralized approaches during the next election. The office already scales to hundreds of temporary employees for election events and expects headcount and space needs to climb with a projected rise in county population through 2030.
Commissioners asked about practices in other counties. Lavancher said most supervisors of elections in similarly sized counties use churches as polling places; using schools while they are in session is "very rare". She said she would research additional practices and report back.
County leaders acknowledged the constraint and said administration will work with the elections office to identify holding locations in growth corridors and continue longer-term facility planning.
