Editor’s note: More than 10,000 officials across the country run U.S. elections. This interview is part of a series highlighting the election heroes who are the faces of democracy.
Wendy Sartory Link, a Democrat and South Florida native, is the Supervisor of Elections for Palm Beach County, Florida. Home to nearly one million registered voters, Palm Beach County is one of three counties that make up the Miami metropolitan area, the third largest in the state by population, and the second largest by area.
As an attorney of over 30 years, Supervisor Link has always had a passion for service — she’s sat on numerous boards and commissions — but never imagined running for elected office. She was first appointed to the role by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in 2019 to finish out her predecessor’s term, but caught the “elections bug” and was elected to the role in 2020 and 2024.
While Palm Beach County made national headlines for the hanging chad and butterfly ballot debacle of the 2000 presidential election, Supervisor Link and her office have worked hard to transform the county’s reputation. The county has gained prominence for its excellence in administering elections under her guidance. Most recently, in 2024, the office was recognized for its accomplishments by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The EAC awarded Palm Beach County two Clearinghouse Awards (“Clearie”), one for expanding the use of ExpressVote ballot-marking devices across early voting sites and another for introducing “I Voted” braille stickers for voters. The county was also awarded a Clearie honorable mention for its mobile app that increased communication and efficiency between election workers at polling locations and the elections office.
Alongside her deep dedication to safe and secure elections, Supervisor Link has a passion for higher education. She held a long-standing seat on the Palm Beach State College board of trustees, sat on the board of governors for the State University System of Florida, and has combined her love for elections and higher education by teaching a course on elections at Florida Atlantic University.
Most recently, Supervisor Link was elected president of Florida’s Supervisor of Elections association, which represents the Supervisors of Elections from all 67 counties in the state. She has been a part of Issue One’s Faces of Democracy campaign since 2024, advocating for protections for election workers and for regular, predictable, and sufficient federal funding of elections.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Issue One: How did you end up in this profession?
Wendy Sartory Link: I'm not a politician. I actually was a commercial real estate and corporate lawyer, I had also done some crisis management work for clients, and had a nice practice and was really happy with my work.
I got a call out of the blue one day from somebody I knew who mentioned to me that it looked like the governor, Governor DeSantis, who had just been elected, was going to be making some changes and that they wanted me to consider applying to be the Supervisor of Elections.
And I said, “No… I vote.” I’ve always encouraged people to register to vote, but was never terribly political on either side. I had some friends who were politicians and would sometimes do fundraisers for them on both sides of the aisle. So I think I was probably looked at as a little bit down the middle, someone who wasn’t going to be terribly objectionable to either party.
After a lot of conversation, I went up to talk to the governor and told him I was leery because I didn’t have the background. He pointed out that unless you already work in elections, you’re not going to have the background. I thought that with my experience, I could learn it quickly, and so I agreed to do it. Initially, I thought I’d do it just for the first two years to get through 2020. But once I was in, I got bit by the election bug. My office was also making a lot of changes, and I knew that we had a long way to go, and I knew that I wanted to stay in to continue that work.
Luckily, I have been fortunate — I was initially appointed and then was elected in 2020 and re-elected in 2024, and I hope things continue to go well.
Issue One: What part of the election administration story in Palm Beach County do you think is not told or widely understood enough?
Wendy Sartory Link: I think there are a couple of things. A lot of people don't realize how ministerial this job can be, that so much of what we do is governed by state law, and that election administrators are truly implementing those rules, not making them.
A lot of folks will come to our office telling us, “You need to get rid of vote by mail,” for example. So we spend a lot of time explaining how the work we do is governed by statute and that we follow the statutes. Folks will ask what we think about certain things — it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what the statute says, and that's what we're going to do.
I also think people don't have any idea how hard election staff works — the nights, the weekends, how committed they are. Our staff truly cares. They're in this. Almost everybody in my office could go into the private sector or go into even other government jobs and make a lot more money, but they stay in it because they love what they do. They really care about the work that we do and making a difference. I don’t think people realize the dedication that goes in.
I think people don't realize just how busy non-election years are with things such as data management, list maintenance, equipment, security reviews, all the professional training we do, the courses that we take, the events that we put on, just even administrative improvements we want to make — those have to be done during the non-election years.
Issue One: In your job, how have you worked to bring more transparency to the world of election administration?
Wendy Sartory Link: We've really tried to be overly communicative with the public, and our office has been very fortunate. We’ve won a lot of awards for the way we engage with the public through all kinds of different ways.
One of the probably most effective that we've had is our experience tours, where we provide folks a behind-the-scenes tour of our office. We didn’t know if anyone would show up, but it was unbelievably successful. People really appreciated being able to come in and see behind the scenes and understand everything that goes into the process from the security and safety side. They got to see all of the different things that have to be done behind the scenes that they didn’t realize.
I also think auditing has been helpful. Ever since we’ve had the ability to, we have made the policy decision here in our office to audit 100% of our races in every election. We use ES&S for tabulation and Clear Ballot for our audit. With two different companies, two different ways of looking at the ballots — we’re really counting every ballot twice (although tabulating only once obviously). So, we are telling voters that we have audited all of the races by doing the process twice and have gotten the same result and same winner. We hope that makes voters feel good about who is being put into office.
I think with our new office, we’re very fortunate, too. We have a new office that is about a year old — we were able to combine our warehouse activities with our main office. So bringing people into the office is easier because they can do everything in a one-stop shop. We have a lot of windows, a lot of transparency, where they can just look in and see what is happening.
We do a lot with voter education and voter engagement. We sort of challenge ourselves each year to do more than we’ve done the previous year. Last year, we spent well over 2,000 hours, and so far this year, we’re already at around 1,600 hours spent in the community doing outreach events and voter registration. I think just being out there in the public, whether it’s me doing presentations or other members of our team in the community engaging, they know they can ask questions, and they put names to faces.
Another thing we’ve done is that when I came into office, I wanted to strengthen our relationship with the press. I’ve invited the press in. People don’t trust what you don’t let them see, so we wanted to make the press our partners, let them understand and see what we do. We did a lot to do so during the first couple of years. The press responded well because they hadn’t had the opportunity to be involved and to see. Now, they know that any time they call or they want an interview, I’m going to give it to them. Whether the news is good or bad, I’m going to give them the facts, because I’d rather they have them understand the facts than what somebody else is making up out there. And they know they can drop in — we have a walk-in policy.
I think that's all really helped to make people feel like they know what's going on behind our doors here.
Issue One: How many voters are on the roll in your jurisdiction, and what are the main challenges of a jurisdiction of that size?
Wendy Sartory Link: We have over 913,000 active, registered voters on our roll. If we include the inactive, but eligible voters, it’s well over a million.
We're a large county, not just with the number of residents and voters we have, but physically. We are one of the largest counties, if not the largest — we are larger than the sizes of Rhode Island and Delaware in just our county. So with that, that presents some physical challenges, just getting from one place to the other.
It can take us over an hour to get to some of our outer offices from our main office, which is pretty centrally located. When you’re deploying equipment, getting poll workers deployed, getting poll workers into their training, we can’t just expect our poll workers to come in here for training a couple of times in addition to going to the polling location. So we have to take all of our equipment and our poll worker training to them in various parts of the county if we want to be able to attract all of the good poll workers out there. It’s the same thing with voter education. Everything just takes longer when you’re as spread out as we are.
That has been some of the challenge. And I think part of it, too, is the way our county has grown. As the county gets more dense and populated, it's doing so in a sort of more private fashion. We have a lot of gated communities or private communities, so there aren't necessarily governmental centers in all of these areas. They might have a beautiful and lovely clubhouse to service their residents, but they don’t have to and often don’t want to have a polling location there. As we get more dense and need to service more areas, we don’t often have the government or other types of facilities to serve those voters — that often presents a challenge, especially with early voting.
When you have as large of an area as our county has, not only voter education can be a challenge, but also, there’s so much inaccurate information that can get out there, and it’s in so many far-reaching places, I’m not always hearing about it in time to correct it before something false starts spreading.
Getting to our main office isn’t easy for everybody. I do have three other satellite offices around the counties that fully service people, but that’s not where the action is happening. It is harder for people who are further away. While they’re of course always welcome, it’s not like everyone can drive just 10 minutes to get to our offices — some often have to drive well over an hour, even though they are in our county. We don’t get to reach everybody as much as we’d like, and I think that can be a challenge. That’s why we have to focus a lot more on the types of communication we send — whether it’s emails or sending physical mailers. We are working on accessibility and expanding our hours. We've expanded our early voting hours. We've expanded the number of polling locations, just trying to make it easier for people.
We actually started something that, as far as I know, we’re the only ones in the country doing — which is allowing people to make appointments for early voting. That’s partially because we know people are traveling from far away oftentimes, and we try to get early voting close to them, but we know it’s a little more palatable if they are able to make an appointment so that they know that when they get there, they’re going to be able to at least get into the polling location within 15 minutes. I think we have to be a little bit more creative and try to communicate all year long in order to make that part work.
It started out because we knew that during the 2020 election, lines for voting on both election day and during early voting were really long. I saw voters waiting in the rain, and our county also has a little bit of an older population who were standing in the heat or the rain, and I just thought that there had to be a better way. Yes, we can give people a place to sit while they wait, but it’s sometimes not going to be in a covered or shaded area.
We tried it out in 2021 during special elections — we thought it would be a good time to test it out since it was a smaller election in order to see how well it was received. We didn’t promote it widely because we wanted to make sure it worked first. We had about 21,000 people make an appointment, and we found that 99% kept their appointment. After each election, we have continued to make improvements, and in the 2024 general election, we had 100,000 make an appointment, and about 98.7% of people kept them!
Issue One: Many people are surprised to learn that the federal government doesn’t routinely fund the costs of running elections. Why do you think the federal government should routinely contribute to election administration costs?
Wendy Sartory Link: Because safe and secure elections are at the heart of our country. They are what sets our country apart from so many others.
I know that voting is a process that's typically left to the states, but the federal government could assist the states. While every state is different, has different priorities, and has different focuses for their citizens — they all share that they want safe and secure elections, they want their elections to be accurate, and they want as many people who are eligible to vote to vote. Since that is a common thread that goes all throughout all 50 states, it would be wise for the federal government to allocate funds because it’s something that the states do that is similar in its focus and its scope — it’s incredibly important. We know some states have more resources than others and to the extent that the federal government is able to support and raise all states up, then we are just going to be better as a nation.
Issue One: Florida is known for frequently having natural disasters like hurricanes. How do election officials keep elections safe and secure in the face of natural disasters? And what are some ways your county has had to adapt to any natural disasters in recent years?
Wendy Sartory Link: We have contingency plans, of course, as everybody does. And then I say we have contingency plans for our contingency plans.
Our COOP (Continuity of Operations Plan) is something we spend a lot of time developing. We work very closely with our partner agencies like Homeland, FBI, and Cyber Navigators. We also work with the state, with our county Emergency Operations Center, and with other constitutional officers so that everybody understands what would be necessary in the event that an emergency happens. Not everybody thinks about what goes into election administration.
We will have tabletop exercises where we invite all of those folks to our office to just hear about our plan, so that if something might happen, that they are aware that we have 400 polling locations on Election Day and that we need to get certain equipment out and so that they know that it’s not just about taking it around the corner, that it needs to be taken an hour away. We are constantly asking ourselves, “What needs to be done? How many tents would we need? How many generators would we need?” We have folks that are aware of these things because of the work we’ve previously done to figure out what our needs are.
We also work with the Secretary of State’s office, which can be very helpful when we need things. Working with the media and having a strong relationship with them allows them to be great partners with us if we need to get information out to our residents.
Our new building is certainly helpful because it was built to withstand hurricane-force winds, and we’ve got generators, so we could do a lot at our main building. We are fairly centrally located, so we should be able to maintain a lot of things here.
And the last thing that is important, but definitely not the least — I am really blessed this year to be the president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, and I’ve been a member of the association since I started my role in 2019. I’ve learned that it is the most helpful group of people that you’ll ever come across. When we’ve had disasters, throughout the state, different counties have different needs. It’s been amazing to see the other 66 counties reaching out to assist and help folks. For example, we have a mobile unit for emergencies, and we had it go to Taylor County when they had three hurricanes in a row. We lent equipment out to Lee County as well. I know when things have come up, counties are always reaching out asking how they can help. You have people who understand what you’re going through, and they know what you need. Sometimes it’s offering to deliver a hot meal to a team and their workers, but just people understanding what you need within the association is incredibly helpful.
Issue One: How have cybersecurity resources provided by organizations, including CISA, been important to your work administering elections? And how have recent cuts to these resources impacted your work in Palm Beach County?
Wendy Sartory Link: It is certainly impacting our work on the day to day. We’ve relied on those resources, especially on the cyber side — they are so important.
To the extent that we lose them, we need to replace them with paid services, with additional staff, with whatever it takes. There’s certainly a budgetary effect that we hadn’t budgeted for and that our county wasn’t anticipating. The partnership, when you’re thinking about the paid resources to the extent that it’s the private sector, we have to do the vetting ourselves.
When we were working more closely with CISA, having them come in and do evaluations for us was really important. They helped to point out any areas we might want to strengthen, whether it be physical or cyber security. They took a look at our systems and identified where we could harden them more.
As we lose these resources, we can’t just say, “Gee, that was nice, too bad we don’t have it anymore.” We have to figure out a way to replace them because it wasn’t just nice to have — it’s something we consider critical. We are having to spend a lot of time trying to make sure that we are equally as covered as we have been in the past, but we sure do miss the partnership to the extent that it was there.
Issue One: In recent years, election-related misconceptions, conspiracy theories, and lies have proliferated. How has this impacted your daily work?
Wendy Sartory Link: The conspiracy theories and the inaccurate information—it's just toxic. It really can hurt so much of what we're trying to do, and it takes up a huge amount of time. We're constantly responding to frivolous accusations and lawsuits.
In a recent lawsuit we were involved in, I believe there were 42 motions filed in one month’s time. Just think about the amount of time that high-level folks in my office are spending and the amount of money we’re spending responding to what really has been completely frivolous accusations and drains our staff time. We have an obligation, of course, to respond to them and address them, no matter how removed from reality these claims might be.
People are spreading misguided claims, or sometimes, there are people who just don’t know and end up believing inaccurate information as fact. They are making claims about our staff, election workers, and poll workers who are doing the absolute best they can. And there’s just a real emotional toll that comes with all of that. Our office does a lot of poll worker appreciation just to let them know how important they are to us. Poll workers are harder and harder to come by now. They are oftentimes being criticized when they’re doing nothing other than what we have trained them to do.
Even among our staff, I lost two staff members. One who was very close to me told me, “I can’t do this anymore. The way these folks come in, yell, scream, lie, says things about us. I leave, and I am so exhausted, and I get home, and sometimes I break down and cry. It’s just not worth it. I can’t do it anymore.” All because of what we’ve faced on a daily basis, sometimes — especially during elections.
Public record requests take out a huge amount of time. I am all about public records and promoting transparency. I am happy to answer and provide any information during a public records request, especially if I believe you are really interested in this information and want to know it. There was a time when we were getting about 100 public records requests a day, and you could tell they were copy and paste from some group. Of course, again, we’re obligated to respond to them, and we will, but the amount of time it takes for something like that, it’s just demoralizing for folks.
I just don’t understand the goal — if these folks’ goal is to have elections be more safe, secure, and transparent, there are so many better ways to go about that. What they’re really doing is costing a lot of money that could be better spent doing what they want us to do — which is to provide a safe, secure, transparent, and accurate election.
Issue One: Given all these challenges, why do you stay in this line of work?
Wendy Sartory Link: When I got into elections, I didn’t really have an understanding of what I was going into because I didn’t have a background in it. But throughout my life and career, I’ve always been civically involved, whether it be philanthropic, business, or community issues. Service has been fundamental to my life, and this is just a different type of service. I never sought to be an elected official. And I will often be asked, “After this, what’s your next office?” There’s no next office in my mind; the only reason I run for this one is because I have to. But being an elected official isn’t something I aspired to.
It’s the chance to really make a difference. Palm Beach County did not have a great reputation for elections when I took the role, and the mood was very somber among staff. I wanted to transform the office so that staff would be so proud to work here, and that is something that we’ve focused on.
We also do so much in the community. I don't like change for the sake of change, but I’m definitely not afraid of it and, in fact, will seek it out if we can improve something. I think the work we’ve done and the people that we’ve been able to serve, we’ve been able to take Palm Beach County maybe toward the “bottom of the barrel” to the absolute “top of the heap.” Now our office is exciting and invigorating.
I work with great people, some who have been here for 30 years, and they tell me that working here now is so exciting for them. They have loved the change and improvements, they love to serve the voters. They remember what our focus is. We have three main areas of focus that we call the “big three”: integrity, accountability, and service. The people who work here have bought into it, they believe it.
It’s the people here that inspire me, and working with the public. While I loved being a lawyer, and it was certainly financially more lucrative, I think at the end of my days, when I look back and hope that I made the world a little better, this is one of the ways I’m going to feel good — knowing that the work our office has done here has made our little teeny part of the world a better place.
Issue One: What advice do you have for someone who might be interested in going into the field of election administration?
Wendy Sartory Link: Have thick skin. You have to be aware of how much work is involved and how much you’ll have to take on.
I think sometimes people think, if they aren’t aware of what’s involved, that it’s probably only busy around election time and that there will be a lot of downtime. If you’re doing the job well and constantly improving, wanting to continue to have forward momentum, you’re going to be just as busy in those off years as you are during an election year. I think people should be aware of that.
I also think it’s important to meet with local election officials, learn more about their roles, and learn about the diversity of election needs. For example, our office serves 39 different municipalities. So to the extent that you’d work with municipalities, it’s important to know what one needs versus another and what it’s like to work with so many different people.
I think people who come from the business world have a lot to offer in this field. The accountability and focus on budget and getting the most “bang for your buck,” knowing where to allocate resources, having a plan and goals every day, making sure everybody knows what they need to do to meet collective goals, and tracking progress to ensure they are accomplished are really valuable skills.
I wouldn’t want to scare anybody off. It's a phenomenal opportunity to make a difference, and I would certainly encourage people to get involved. We need more people, good people, involved.
And as long as people understand that, then they'll have a real great chance of being successful.
Issue One: Outside of being passionate about safe and secure elections, what are your hobbies?
Wendy Sartory Link: I've got a great family. I have three sons and a stepson, so they’re a lot of fun. A lot of what I do revolves around them. I have a son who is involved in baseball, one who is very involved in AI, another working in D.C. in the communications world, and another who is a professor at the University of Florida getting his doctorate in computer engineering. I follow their worlds, which is really exciting to me.
My husband’s in college sports, so being a college sports fan is very important in my world. And I also love colleges. I was previously very involved in the Board of Governors for our state university system. I have a passion for higher education. I actually also teach at our local university — “Elections Law in Practice” as an unpaid adjunct professor just to stay involved with students and try to help people understand what we do in elections. Plus, I love college campuses.
I also try to walk, stay physically fit, and spend time with my dogs.
Issue One: What is your favorite book or movie?
Wendy Sartory Link: I have a couple of favorite books. I loved “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” “A Fine Balance,” “Angela’s Ashes”, “The Book Thief,” and “Zeitoun.” I don’t have a particular genre that I like; I just find a lot of different things interesting. I’ll read fiction and nonfiction whenever I get a chance.
Issue One: Which historical figure would you have most liked to have had an opportunity to meet?
Wendy Sartory Link: I think George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. George Washington did so much from nothing — he was starting something so different and did it with such humility and leadership, I think there’s a lot to be learned from that. And then you had Abraham Lincoln with the challenges he faced in trying to reunify a country. The leadership that it took and a different perspective.
Those two really come to mind because I’m always interested in leadership and how to be a better leader, and I think I could learn a lot from the unique challenges and situations that they faced.
Amelia Minkin is a research associate at Issue One.
Rebecca Dorsey is an Election Protection Intern at Issue One.
