About the news from The Lake Worth Herald last Friday.

UPDATE 2:

Tom Copeland has indeed conceded the election to Commissioner Herman Robinson but there will be a run-off election next Tuesday, March 26th anyway despite Copeland ending his candidacy on Wednesday, March 13th.


UPDATE 1:

Word is Mr. Tom Copeland has changed his mind and WILL NOT concede the election to Commissioner Herman Robinson.

Today at City Hall will be Resolution No. 07-2019 certifying the results of the two ballot questions followed by the swearing-in of District 2 Commissioner Omari Hardy.

For more about this what follows is a blog post from last Saturday.


It seems to be a fairly straightforward process in that Resolution No. 07-2019 was amended and once adopted will all become very officially official. And Item 14 on next Tuesday’s City Commission agenda is the City attorney’s report to the Commission and that is when all this will likely be explained to the public.

Learn more about Resolution 07-2019 later in this blog post.

Here is an excerpt from the news in the Herald,


The election held on March 12 produced no clear winner in race for the District Four Commissioner. A majority of 50% plus one vote is required. The two top vote getters in the four way race were incumbent Herman Robinson with 48.81% and Tom Copeland with 27.73%. Although Copeland has “conceded” the race to Robinson, the run-off is still mandated and preparations for the election are underway according to the Lake Worth City Clerk’s office.


Was the writer at the Herald accurate? Yes, absolutely. Even on the PBC Supervisor of Elections’ website today it lists three cities with municipal run-off elections on March 26th: Lake Worth Beach, Riviera Beach and West Palm Beach which of course does not have a beach.

However, next Tuesday at a Special Commission meeting in Lake Worth Beach City Hall Resolution No. 07-2019 will include the official concession by Mr. Tom Copeland [NOW RESCINDED] and this resolution will also certify the re-election of commissioners Omari Hardy and Herman Robinson and the two ballot questions the public approved.

True, “It ain’t over til it’s over” but next Tuesday about 6:00 or so it will all be over and the 2019–2020 Election Season in Lake Worth Beach will be indeed over and some will be happy and some will be sad. But in short order all this information will be sent to the Supervisor of Elections (SOE).

However, the period for “Airing of Grievances” is different for everyone and for some people the ‘Airing of Grievances’ never ended after PBSO took over for the LWPD ten years ago.

Question: “Is it unusual for someone to have their name removed from the ballot?”

Not sure if this example helps much but looking back at the situation in 2017 with former Commissioner Maier — which in typical fashion took nearly a month for this to become news in The Palm Beach Post — but it was breaking news in the very next edition of The Lake Worth Herald:

Here is the letter submitted to the Lake Worth
City Clerk in December 2016.

Click on image to enlarge:

In early January 2017 Commissioner Maier was on the ballot but the official ballots had not yet been sent to the printer. So Maier was indeed fortunate. By the way, Susan Bucher was the SOE at the time and what happened on August 28th, 2014 was still fresh in everyone’s mind.