BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Brevard County’s supervisor of elections will move onto a general election in November after beating his challenger in the Republican primary on Tuesday.
Brevard County Supervisor of Elections Tim Bobanic beat outgoing Brevard County Commissioner John Tobia, 59.62% to 40.38%.
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Bobanic will now face write-in candidate Sandra Cottrell in the November general election.
Votes
%
Tim Bobanic*(R)
John Tobia(R)
(162 / 162)
[RELATED: Here’s what will be on the Aug. 20 election ballot in Brevard County | Florida election voting guide]
The supervisor of elections is in charge of overseeing the office that registers people to vote, maintains voter rolls, qualifies local candidates for races, sends out vote-by-mail ballots, staffs and manages polling locations and, finally, makes sure votes are tabulated and election results are determined with accuracy and transparency.
The elections supervisor has to navigate a complicated set of election laws and rules to make sure all of this is done and manage a staff that has to deal with the public, including those who question the accuracy of elections.
They also have to keep up with all the security issues that come with elections.
The Brevard County Supervisor of Elections office has four locations in Titusville, Viera, Melbourne and Palm Bay.
Let’s meet the candidates.
TIM BOBANIC - Campaign website
Tim Bobanic was appointed in 2022 to run the elections office by Gov. Ron DeSantis after the departure of longtime elections supervisor Lori Scott.
Before that, he worked in the Brevard County elections office as director of IT and election services for almost 10 years and served four years as Director of Information technology in the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections office.
Scott recommended Bobanic to DeSantis herself, saying his knowledge of the “intricacies of running elections in Brevard and invaluable knowledge of our cybersecurity protocols would allow for a seamless transition.”
In that time he was involved in implementing programs to improve transparency, including an automated system to audit all of the ballots in every election, as well as the SigView program, which makes it easier to compare a signature on a mail ballot envelope with the one on a voter’s record.
In 2023, the office won the Clearinghouse Award for Outstanding Innovations in Elections by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission because of the SigView program.
Bobanic is a Master Florida Certified Elections Professional, a certification he earned through the Florida Supervisor of Elections Association.
JOHN TOBIA - Commission Website
Brevard County Commissioner John Tobia currently represents District 3 don’t he county commission, which includes Melbourne, Melbourne Beach, Palm Bay, Grant-Valkaria, Malabar, West Melbourne and Micco.
He is a professor of political science at Valencia College.
Tobia is term-limited in the county commission. News 6 emailed him to request campaign materials, including a website and social media, but we never got a response. No specific campaign website or campaign social media accounts were found. In the past, News 6 has posted several stories on proposals by Tobia.
For instance, Tobia pushed a plan to get Cocoa Beach, Indialantic and Melbourne Beach to chip in 50% for the cost of lifeguards on beaches in those cities.
He pushed to allow bars and restaurants in unincorporated areas of the county to sell alcohol 24/7.
Tobia also pushed to require county first responders to be vaccinated against COVID-19, which the county commission rejected.
Tobia was also the subject of a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into purported misuse of county resources.
According to Florida Today, a former Tobia aide made a number of allegations, including having county staff obtain information about Bobanic with a special email account created to look like it belonged to Bobanic.
The 7th Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office, which handled the case, declined to press charges.
He was also accused of using his county staff to help him grade Valencia College student assignments while employees were on the clock for the county.
A spokesperson for Valencia College confirmed to News 6 that Tobia has been placed on paid administrative leave and is not teaching classes while the college investigates.
Before he served on the commission, Tobia represented Brevard County in the Florida House of Representatives from 2008 to 2016. The Florida House allows you to search the bills he sponsored by year on its website.
Tobia was known as a supporter of education initiatives. He was a cosponsor on dozens of bills that became law, but few of the bills he himself spearheaded became law.
In 2010, he got two bills passed, one that made a number of changes to life insurance rules in the state, and one that made changes to the Brevard Police Testing and Selection Center.
In 2011, he got a bill passed to allow the Brevard Art Museum to have a license to serve alcohol.
In 2016, the legislature passed a version of a bill he sponsored to make changes to how a labor pool compensates day laborers.
In 2015, he was one of two representatives to vote against a bill that banned a person from willfully and maliciously sexually harassing a person over the internet. The bill ultimately became law.
The other representative who voted against the bill was future U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz.