PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — On top of managing our elections, Palm Beach County election officials said they're managing another tedious task: Wading through a flood of public records requests.
In response of our own to the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, WPTV found that 844 individual public records requests were filed between the Presidential Preference Primary in March and the end of September.
"It's high, but it's not the highest it's ever been," said Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link.
Link recalled the days since the 2020 election, when her office would receive about a hundred requests from the same person in one day, which can make it hard to get things done.
"We want to keep up with these (requests) and be timely on them," Link said. "We are having to pull people away from their election duties in order to process these."
Link said handling public records requests used to require one part-time staffer. Her office has since hired two additional full-time employees to keep up.
The list of requests provided to WPTV included names that in some cases appeared dozens of times. Some of those names belonged to journalists and people conducting routine background checks.
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"Since March of 2022, several grassroots have observed, in a nonpartisan effort, to evaluate our election process from a voter's point of view," said Patricia Testa in an email to WPTV.
Testa sent more than 50 records requests since the March presidential primary. She declined an on-camera interview.
Jeff Buongiorno, who is running against Link for elections supervisor, filed seven requests during that time frame and said he was familiar with others who had filed dozens more. He denied that their efforts were coordinated.
"We're just all citizens trying to get the truth," Buongiorno said.
Buongiorno's requests included every individual IP address for a mail-in-ballot request and detailed logs from the county's electronic voting machines.
Buongiorno also said he requested a receipt for a battery, which he believes could reveal a security breach in the county's voting systems. That request did not appear on the list obtained by WTPV.
He said he asked for that information, because he's skeptical of the way elections are run in Palm Beach County.
Asked whether he believes Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Buongiorno replied:
"Well, it's hard to tell, because we have a problem with blank ballots. If I can get an answer on the public request records for why there were 20,313 blank ballots registered in this in Palm Beach County in the 2020 election, then I would be able to answer that question."
There have been multiple audits of the 2020 election results, as well as dozens of lawsuits nationwide challenging those results. None of those efforts produced any evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Link said her office will answer every public record request, in accordance with Florida's public records laws.
"If that public record is available, then we provide it," Link said.
However, there are exceptions to those laws.
"Because we are part of critical infrastructure with the Department of Homeland Security, when people ask for all of our cyber security methods and all the things we're doing, we don't provide that information," she said.
Link said if her office receives a request for records that are exempt from Florida's public records laws, her staff will respond to that request with an explanation of what those records are exempt.
Even if they can provide the records, Link said some of the requests - like the one for IP addresses - are so broad that they take time to put together, which can cost the requester a lot of money.
Based on the nature of some of the requests reviewed by WPTV, Chief Investigator Jamie Ostroff asked Link some of the questions it appears the requesters are looking to answer:
Ostroff: Are dead people voting?
Link: No.
Ostroff: Are undocumented migrants voting?
Link: Not that we're aware of. Now, one of the questions we always get is, "How do you know?" Well, they fill out a voter registration application, they've checked - first of all - whether or not they're a citizen or not. They provided their address. They also are going to provide driver's license and social. We are aware that people who aren't US citizens have in the past gotten a driver's license and social, but then we send it up to the state. We don't have the database that the state has. The state has the eligibility database where they can determine whether somebody is a US citizen. They check that. At the state level, and they let us know if someone's not a US citizen, they are removed from the rolls.
Ostroff: Are people voting twice?
Link: No. If they're voting twice-- so the way we know that is our records are updated every 15 seconds. So when you vote in at early voting, for example, if you were to vote at 1:00, and then at 1:30 we received your vote-by-mail ballot. When we're processing that, it's going to out-stack it, because it was going to show that you already had voter history, (and) vice versa. As soon as we get your vote-by-mail ballot and it's clocked in, then if you go to show up to vote in person -- either early voting or on Election Day -- it's going to show that you already turned in your vote-by-mail.
