Polls Close at 7 Tonight: Today's Hernando Primary Decides a Commission Seat, Three School Board Races and a Judgeship

Hernando County precincts opened at 7 a.m. today and close at 7 p.m., and the biggest name on the ballot is a seat nobody has been elected to yet: County Commission District 2, where five candidates are competing for the post Brian Hawkins gave up in June. Every registered voter in the county can vote in that race no matter their party, and because the winner will have no opposition in November, today's count settles it.

You must vote at your own assigned precinct. It is printed on your voter information card, and locations do change between elections, so the Supervisor of Elections Office recommends checking before you drive. Polling places and precinct lookups are at HernandoVotes.gov, and the office answers questions at 352-754-4125. Bring current photo and signature ID.

District 2: a five-way race open to everyone

Kathryn Birren, Silvia Dukes, Maxwell Joseph Glenn, Diane M. Greenwell and James Scavetta are all running as Republicans. Under Florida law, when every qualified candidate for an office shares a party and the winner will be unopposed in the general election, the contest becomes a Universal Primary Contest and opens to all voters. That is what happened here, which is why Democrats, independents and third-party voters will see the District 2 race on their ballots today.

The seat has been in flux all summer. Hawkins resigned in June to run for the state House. John Mitten was later appointed to hold the seat temporarily and was sworn in on August 4. Growth and development have dominated the campaign, according to local news reports, in a county still absorbing new subdivisions along its western edge.

Three school board seats, and all three incumbents are on the ballot

School board races in Florida are nonpartisan, so party labels do not appear and any voter can cast a ballot in all three. Members are elected countywide but must live in the district they represent. Terms run four years, and the job pays roughly $47,000 a year.

Seat	Candidates
District 1	Mark Johnson (incumbent), Dana Pearce
District 3	Shannon Rodriguez (incumbent), Luciano Vignali
District 5	Susan Duval (incumbent), Amanda Cunningham-Rud, Kara Champion

Districts 1 and 3 are head-to-head, so both will be finished tonight. District 5 has three names, and a candidate needs a majority to win outright in the primary. If nobody clears 50 percent, the top two advance to the November general election.

Pearce, a retired Springstead High School principal, spent 25 years in Hernando schools. Johnson first joined the board in 2014, lost in 2018 and returned in 2022 after a narrow runoff win. In District 3, Rodriguez, the board's vice chair, faces Vignali, a parent of two Winding Waters K-8 students. District enrollment and the funding that follows it came up repeatedly at candidate forums this summer.

The judicial race

Nicole M. Morris and Lisa Yeager are on the ballot for Circuit Judge, 5th Judicial Circuit, Group 27. The 5th Circuit covers Hernando along with Citrus, Lake, Marion and Sumter counties, so voters in all five decide it. Judicial races are nonpartisan and open to every voter, and with two candidates the winner is chosen in the primary.

If you have a vote-by-mail ballot at home

It has to be in the hands of the Supervisor of Elections by 7 p.m. today. Mail ballots cannot be dropped off at a polling place. The deadline to request one passed on August 6.

Early voting wrapped up Saturday after running August 8 through 15 at five sites: the Forest Oaks Elections Office on Forest Oaks Boulevard, Spring Hill Library, the South Brooksville Community Center on East Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, East Hernando Library on Windmere Road, and the county Utilities Department building on Cortez Boulevard. Those ballots are already tabulated and are typically the first numbers to post after polls close.

Unofficial returns begin appearing on the Supervisor of Elections website shortly after 7 p.m. and build through the evening as precincts report. The county Canvassing Board meets afterward to certify the results, and any race that fails to produce a majority winner rolls into the November 3 general election ballot.

For more coverage of local races, meetings and county decisions, visit Hernando County Community Website and browse our government and politics stories or the latest in news. Follow us on Facebook for updates as results come in tonight, and join the conversation in our Community Forum to tell your neighbors how voting went at your precinct.

Header photo: Ebyabe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)