Palm Beach County’s Wendy Sartory Link is new president of Florida elections supervisors

Wendy Sartory Link arrived as an outsider with a deceptively simple mandate: Keep Palm Beach County elections out of the news.

That instruction from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appointed Link county supervisor of elections, meant avoiding the periodic election disasters that sometimes attracted major national attention, helped fuel partisan rancor, contributed to some people’s distrust in voting, and at times made Palm Beach County the butt of jabs from late-night comedy hosts.

Link expected she’d spend two years in office, finishing the remainder of her predecessor’s term. As she embraced the complexity and promise of the job, Link said she realized there was more to do, and changed her mind.

She has been elected twice by county voters to four-year terms as supervisor of elections, managed voting during the coronavirus pandemic, countered conspiracy theorists attempting to sow distrust and led the move into a state-of-the-art election headquarters.

Now, she’s beginning a one year term as president of Florida Supervisors of Elections, the statewide association of elections supervisors from across the state.

Link said in an interview that Florida now is the “platinum standard” for elections, better than gold. It’s no longer the focus of national scrutiny over its vote counting process and lengthy voting, largely because of election law changes after the disputed George W. Bush-Al Gore presidential contest in 2000, and largely because of the state’s 67 supervisors of elections.

“We all have one very similar focus, and that is to make sure everybody’s vote counts, to protect the integrity of that vote, to make sure everything is secure. And so, when we work together, which we do through the association, we just continue to make Florida better and better. We continue to stand out across the country,” she said.

Elections supervisors, as a group, often have to respond to changes state legislators want to make in the elections system. Link said elections supervisors are implementers of state policy, but they will try to shape proposed election law changes to ensure they don’t cause unintended side effects.

“We’re very cognizant of our role. Our role is to implement the policy that’s passed in the laws. But as it relates to how it would be administered and the mechanics of that, we will usually work with them to say we understand what you’re trying to accomplish, but the mechanics … if you just did it this way, it could work out,” she said. “Sometimes the Legislature accepts our input, and sometimes they don’t.”

Link said the supervisors are a diverse group, but she said there is usually a consensus when it comes to running elections.

“We are all elected and we come from large counties, small counties, rural counties, urban counties, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican,” Link said. “But when we do all agree that either a piece of legislation is either very good or very bad or needs to be tweaked … then it’s really something that we hope people will pay attention to,” she said.

The association employs a lobbyist, and has a legislative committee. Link said she may be making more trips to Tallahassee during the coming year.

The association runs extensive education programs for supervisors and their staffs and training for new supervisors. It provides mentors to new supervisors (hers was from Orange County, with an assist from Sarasota County).

And the association also helps with mutual aid in the event of a hurricane or extra disaster. “Does anybody have extra of this? Can we get them that?” she said. “We still have to put elections on no matter what happens.”

Palm Beach County lent out the privacy panels set up around voting stations. In another case the county lent a mobile setup that can be used to replace a polling place if a site goes down at the last minute.

Link said she’d emphasize voter education, which she’s done in Palm Beach County, arguing it’s the best way to alleviate the concerns some people have about voting.

“Unfortunately, most of those who are claiming conspiracy or fraud, most of the time they aren’t fully educated in how our systems work, and so they’re making inaccurate claims,” she said. “If people understand our systems better — those who are willing to listen and learn — they would feel better about it because a lot of the concern is based on inaccurate information.”

Link, a lawyer, had a lengthy resume of business, governmental and civic activities and was well-known to people in the business and political establishment in the county when DeSantis appointed her to fill the vacancy created when he suspended the previous supervisor, Susan Bucher.

The governor said Bucher failed to properly conduct three contentious statewide recounts for the 2018 midterms. He said she didn’t complete the state-mandated recounts for the Nov. 6 election until after Christmas, tarnishing the state’s image and making Florida a national embarrassment.

Link was a Republican at the time, and didn’t intend to run for the job. She registered as a no party affiliation voter when she became supervisor. She changed her mind about the job, became a Democrat and won four-year terms in 2020 and 2024.

“When I came in, I honestly didn’t really know the state of the office at all and what needed to be done. And so I had committed to the governor that I would work hard to make sure that we were ready for the 2020 presidential election,” she said.

DeSantis gave that one instruction. “He did not say do this. Do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.

“His only direction to me was keep Palm Beach County out of the news,” she said. “People don’t tend to write about the great things you do, but they will certainly cover when you don’t do something well, so we’d like to not read about ourselves.”

The exception was last year when a vendor’s error listed the Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz show up as Tom Walz on some overseas and military ballots. The 257 potentially affected voters’ ballots were electronic and quickly updated.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.