- April 30, 2026
-
-
Loading
Loading
The two most stressful hours of Scott Farrington’s job are between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. on an election day.
Farrington was elected as Manatee County’s Supervisor of Elections in 2024, but he’s spent his entire career working elections.
One might think that last-minute ballots and end-of-the-day results would cause the most stress on election days. But given the use of modern equipment and technology, an old-fashioned locked door can cause more stress before the sites are even scheduled to open.
“We don’t encourage this,” Farrington said, “But we’ve had poll workers break windows to get into (polling locations).”
Assistant Supervisor Sharon Stief, who celebrated 35 years working at the Supervisor of Elections office March 20, had heard a story about Manatee County poll workers setting up shop in a parking lot because they couldn’t get anyone on the phone to let them into the polling site building.
A parking lot won’t do in today’s world.
Modern voting machines require electricity, and Manatee County now has the most high-tech equipment on the market, including 100 new tabulators for polling locations, a high-speed scanner and tabulator to count vote-by-mail ballots, and the latest audit machines and software available.
While the Supervisor of Elections position generally is a rather obscure political position, Farrington will be in the spotlight during the upcoming primaries and general election because of an odd sequence of events in 2024.
“I’ve been with Manatee County since 2013, so 13 years with a little hiatus,” Farrington said of his time at the Supervisor of Elections office.
Prior to Manatee County, Farrington spent 10 years working elections in Sarasota County. He’s a Certified Elections Registration Administrator and a Master Florida Certified Election Professional.
Farrington seemed a shoo-in to replace former SOE Mike Bennett after Bennett's retirement March 1, 2024, but Gov. Ron DeSantis had other plans.
DeSantis appointed then-District 1 Commissioner James Satcher instead. Satcher, a commissioner, and preacher, had no prior election office experience.
Farrington served several roles under Bennett — assistant supervisor, chief of staff, and head of IT. He resigned when Satcher took office to launch his campaign for the position.
Satcher was appointed as Supervisor of Elections on April 12, 2024. By May 28, 2024, he had requested and received approval from the commission for a budget increase of $841,340.
Commissioner George Kruse was the only vote to deny the request for a mid-year, 26% budget increase.
Farrington won the Republican nomination over Satcher with nearly 60% of the vote during the August primary election. It was clear Farrington would sail through the general election because his only opponent was a write-in candidate with no party affiliation.
But Farrington was sidelined until Bennett’s term was up and Satcher was no longer the appointed SOE.
Farrington took over Jan. 7, 2025 when he was sworn in as the new SOE. Before that occurred, Satcher had made major changes.
He made upgrades to the office, hired and fired staff, bought new equipment, sent out a mass mailing of voter information cards, and signed a lease on a satellite office in Lakewood Ranch.
The last two list items were deemed “possible wasteful spending” by the Manatee County inspector general's office and totaled $124,244.
An audit period started March 1, 2024 when Bennett retired and ended Jan. 6, 2025, the day before Farrington was sworn in. The audit only examined the office’s financial transactions, not its election procedures. The audit report was issued Sept. 25, 2025.
About $23,000 was spent leasing the Lakewood Ranch office, which never opened to the public.
Satcher signed the lease in July 2024. Farrington and the leasing company mutually terminated the lease in March 2025 when a new tenant was found.
Farrington said Satcher wasn’t completely wrong to consider an office in Lakewood Ranch, but he said it was the wrong location. Additionally, any satellite office would only be of use for the six months leading up to a major election.
Even the county’s second administration building on Town Center Parkway was ruled out because a satellite office would be a waste of space for 18 months out of every two years.
Satcher said he never planned to let the office sit empty. He wanted to use it as an outreach office that could host field trips and meetings for political groups, such as the Manatee Patriots and the League of Women Voters.
While Satcher acknowledged the Lakewood Ranch office's shortcomings, such as a lack of square footage, he noted that the space had served as a government office for former Rep. Tommy Gregory and the building was fortified to sustain major storms.
The mass mailing of voter information cards cost taxpayers over $100,000. The inspector general office's report said “it appears this was done to update the name of the new (now former) SOE on the cards,” but Florida statute “does not stipulate that a new card must be issued when there is a new SOE,” only when an individual voter’s information has changed.
The inspector general office’s “management action plan” recommended “seeking legal advice regarding possible reimbursement from the former SOE for the wasteful spending identified and from the vendor for the expenditures that were not supported with any work product.”
Satcher said no collection effort has been made, and he noted that he had sought legal advice before mailing those cards.
"My legal advice was different than (the inspector general's) conclusions," he said. "Two attorneys can have different conclusions."
The vendor Satcher had hired was Piccolo Strategic Communications. The former SOE paid the communications firm $2,500 a month from May through August 2024. In addition to a what the inspector general's report called a "lack of identifiable services" on half of the invoices from Piccolo, the inspector general found that the products that were delivered “lacked a clear, public purpose.”
Satcher agreed there were no work products identified on his last two invoices with Piccolo, but he said that was by choice. After working together, Satcher said he realized Piccolo didn't share his vision for communications.
"The best thing for everybody was to realize it wasn't a good fit and move on," Satcher said. "Now looking back, we had the biggest election in Manatee County history right after two major hurricanes and we were able to count every vote, verified with an accurate recount, and we had no issues. That was what was most important to me."
But what 2024 did accomplish was to turn the public's attention to the role of the supervisor of elections office, perhaps more than ever before. While Farrington had some backtracking to do once returning to the office, the upside was that his office's old election equipment had been due for an upgrade.
Satcher furnished the office with about $190,000 worth of audit machines and software and secured more than enough funds to replace the rest of the equipment.
Farrington returned $300,000 to the county budget once the remaining equipment was purchased.
The new equipment was used in March during two small elections for the Trailer Estates Park and Recreation District and the West Manatee Fire and Rescue District.
Each machine had already been certified, but the elections served as a good practice run for poll workers to familiarize themselves with the updated equipment and software.
As a candidate in 2024, Farrington noticed lines at some locations. He noted that could have been caused by the two-page ballots that year.
But weather plays a part, too. Humidity can curl paper, so how the ballots are stored in an individual location can impact the amount of paper jams.
Each location will receive at least one new $7,000 tabulator this year. Busier locations will receive two.
The new tabulators have been redesigned to minimize paper jams even if the ballots are curled or crumpled.
“We didn’t have a single jam in the March election,” Farrington said. “The other thing is that they’re a little faster. So from those perspectives, that’s why we’re excited to have them.”
The last tabulators were over 10 years old, so it had become difficult to find replacement parts when anything went wrong. If a machine went down during the primary election, there wasn’t enough time to fix it by the general election.
Any issues with the new machines can be turned around in a timely manner.
Now Farrington's office will be under the microscope as the primaries are scheduled on Aug. 18 and the general election on Nov. 3.
Farrington's staff already is busy with the upcoming elections. Right now, candidates are qualifying to get on the ballot by collecting about 3,000 petitions each.
Staff members have to go through each petition by hand to be sure that every line is filled, that the signer is a verified Manatee County voter, and that the signature matches what’s on file.
If even one line is missed, such as the date, that petition doesn't count.
Once the candidates are qualified, ballots need to be prepared and poll workers have to be trained. Then, it’s on to early voting, mail-in ballots and elections.
Stief has certainly seen the process change over the last 35 years. When she first started, working until 2 a.m. on election night was the norm because they were working with punch cards.
“When we got the scanners, it all changed,” she said.
The 2024 election saw a 2 a.m. quitting time, but Farrington attributed that to a “lack of understanding of what needed to be done on election night.” Quitting time is usually about 10:30 p.m.
However, there are occasional hiccups akin to a locked door when it comes to delivering ballots from the precincts to the main office.
“Before my time, I was told that somebody in the Duette area decided to stop for dinner (before returning the ballots),” Stief said.
Farrington remembered a poll worker who spilled something on herself and went home to shower before returning the ballots. Heading straight back to the office no matter what happens is now part of the poll worker training.
But the longest delay was caused when a poll worker forgot a memory card at the Duette precinct.
“We made her go back and get it,” Farrington said.
