PBC & Voting Machine Election Integrity on Display Today – Top 3 Takeaways – March 13th, 2026
Takeaway #1: Let the recounts begin
Today figures to be a fascinating day to monitor the local political scene. That’s especially true if you’re in Boca Raton wondering who your next mayor will be. That’s true to a somewhat lesser extent if you’re in Lake Worth Beach wondering what the outcome of question 5 will be (a non-actionable question aimed at cleaning up language in the city’s charter). Entering Thursday, we found ourselves in an unusual place. A mayoral election in the county’s second largest city that showed only 6 votes separating the top two candidates, and a ballot question in the county’s ninth largest city that was exactly tied. Whether you have a personal interest in these elections or not, they both are highly instructive for all voters regardless of where you live, and here’s why. The first practice that came into focus yesterday was the curing of vote-by-mail ballots – that took place. Most people are familiar with curing meat. Few are familiar with curing ballots, but it happened to be a process that literally could decide these two elections. Curing ballots takes place when voters turn in their ballots in on time but have errors that make would need to be corrected in order for their votes to legally count. We have curing deadlines after every election though few know what it is and almost never is it a factor in deciding election outcomes. The last election where I found cured ballots altering the outcome was in 2018 in California’s 13th Congressional District where Democrat Adam Gray trailed by 187 votes prior to the curing of ballots, but pulled out the win after all of the “curing” was in. I’ve not found any elections in Florida’s history where cured ballots decided election outcomes...yet here we were this week with two that had the potential to swing with cured ballots. So, what happened after the curing process took place at 5 pm yesterday... While only six votes separated Mike Liebelson and Andy Thompson, 24 outstanding vote-by-mail ballots were set to be cured. Once they were in the results looked like this... Tompson’s six vote lead became only 2... And as for the tied ballot question in Lake Worth Beach there were 4 ballots to be cured and once that process played out the race remained tied.
Takeaway #2: It’s something we’ve never seen before.
But here’s the next part of the process that is instructive for everyone who still has concerns about voting machines and recounts – whom I do hear from somewhat regularly. There were 19,101 total votes cast in Boca’s mayoral race. There were 3,274 votes cast for question 5 in Lake Worth Beach. These are two smaller sample sized elections that will both undergo a machine recount and a hand recount. It’ll be an opportunity for you to see how accurate or inaccurate the initial reading of the voting machines happens to be and then also the recounting by machines. Many have advocated for paper ballot elections that are counted by hand. Today we’ll have two of those and it will be a test for the latest technology we use. In 2018’s high profile recounts of Florida’s governor, senate and agriculture commissioner races, 0.03% of ballots cast changed after the recounts. We’re using new voting machines with better technology in Palm Beach County compared to back then. How will the accuracy compare? Consider this. Three one hundredths of one percent of a change across 19,101 votes – would equal a change of six votes, or in other words a figure with the potential to alter the outcome of Boca’s mayoral race. And across 3,274 votes...there would statistically be a change of 1 vote...which with a tied race would clearly alter the outcome. For those who’re still leery when it comes to election integrity, today’s exercise in these elections holds the potential to be highly instructive in multiple ways.
Takeaway #3: A defining day?
In other news the Iran war is still taking place. Iran is pledging that the Strait of Hormuz will remain shut down and that they’ll bring about $200 oil to attempt to bring our economy to its knees. The good news is that we’re not even halfway there. The bad news is that we’re close to being halfway there. Oil prices rose significantly on Thursday to $95 per barrel, or over 10%. Oil prices are now 48% higher than they were two weeks ago before the Iran war began. With affordability issues already a top concern, there needs to be a path forward quickly without significant implications economically in this country. It’s the reason that coming into this week I said that it held the potential to be a defining week for the second term of Trump’s presidency. The impact of tariffs is one thing, the impact of higher oil and gas prices on top of tariffs is another thing. If Trump’s tariffs and higher oil and gas prices remain in place, there’s nowhere for inflation to go but higher and that’s the last thing anyone but our adversaries want to see for our economy. On the war front here’s the update for what we ended up seeing yesterday... As of Thursday, Operation Epic Fury had produced: 9,300 targets struck in Iran, a total that was 100 more than the day before. In other words, the U.S. launched 500 total attacks – which was the second slowest day yet. But as for Iran – the most interesting thing is that they didn’t successfully fire off any attacks during the day. That comes after two days where they fired off fewer than 100 attacks each day. This is potentially encouraging news as it pertains to the military offensive into Iran. With that said there quickly needs to be the execution of President Trump’s plan to ensure oil tankers can traverse the Strait of Hormuz...or else higher inflation could become sticky. And if that doesn’t happen, (or perhaps even if it does) he should seriously rethink tariff policy quickly. We’re into defining days for what comes next in Iran. We’re also into defining days for the economic impact hitting home in a big way if there isn’t a bit of relief.