Broward elections offices depart from downtown Fort Lauderdale and Lauderhill

After decades in downtown Fort Lauderdale, the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office no longer has a presence there. It’s now located in the suburbs.

The bulk of the agency’s operations moved into a new headquarters in northwest Fort Lauderdale, just south of Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, over the summer. Almost everything that used to take place at a secondary location at the Lauderhill Mall also relocated.

Both locations permanently closed after the Nov. 5 presidential election.

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The downtown Fort Lauderdale office, on the ground floor of the county Governmental Center, was a key spot for candidates and their consultants for many years — the place they’d go to file their paperwork establishing campaign committees and where they’d submit paperwork to get on the ballot.

Now the door is locked and the window is covered. The 8,873 square feet at the Governmental Center is being “repurposed by the county,” elections office spokeswoman Lisa Arneaud said via email.

The lease on the 79,780 square feet of converted retail space once used by a Kmart at the Lauderhill Mall expired after the election.

The new 155,000-square-foot main office, at 4650 NW 21st Ave. in Fort Lauderdale, was finished in July and most employees and equipment moved that month.

The new facility cost $103 million for land, design and construction.

The new location was designed to increase transparency and security, both for elections workers and the ballots.

The design allows political activists, lawyers, elected officials, journalists and everyday citizens to watch almost everything that happens in the voting process — including routine administrative tasks that years ago rarely attracted much interest or attention.

The Supervisor of Elections Office has branch locations in libraries and other community buildings in Coral Springs, Miramar, Pembroke Pines, Pompano Beach and Tamarac.

Arneaud said Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott is “actively looking into opening a few more branch offices placed strategically throughout the county.”

All the offices are open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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

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