Indian River County Voter Guide 2026: Free, Nonpartisan Ballot Tool

Every contest on Indian River County ballots is in one place, from the U.S. Senate down to the Mosquito Control District. Candidates appear in ballot order, and every fact links to its source. You'll find what each amendment would actually do, what's known about each judge on the retention list, and how, when and where to vote.

How to use it in three steps

1. Find your ballot. Choose your city or your precinct (it's on your voter information card, or look it up on the Supervisor of Elections site). The guide then shows only the contests on your ballot. If you live in Vero Beach, Sebastian or Fellsmere, you'll see your city council race; if not, you won't.
2. Review and choose. This is a planning tool, not a ballot: choosing here does not cast a vote, it just fills in your cheat sheet. Every race and question has a Your cheat-sheet choice box with big buttons: tap a candidate's name, or YES or NO. Tap again to change your mind. You can also tap Choose while comparing candidates. Want to know more first? Each candidate's background, stated priorities and positions are one tap away, with the source for every line. You can also compare candidates side by side.
3. Print your cheat sheet. One page, in the same order as your ballot, with your choices filled in and the ones you haven't decided left blank. If you picked a write-in candidate, it reminds you to write the name in. Indian River County's own official sample ballot notes that a sample ballot "may be taken to the polls for reference," so bring it along for your own use and keep it to yourself in the polling place.

What's in the guide

• Every contest on any Indian River County ballot: U.S. Senate (special election), Congress District 9, Governor and Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Chief Financial Officer, Commissioner of Agriculture, State House District 34, County Commission Districts 2 and 4 (voted on countywide), city council races in Sebastian, Vero Beach and Fellsmere, the Sebastian Inlet Tax District and the Mosquito Control District.
• Six judges on the retention ballot: what a YES or NO vote means, lawyer polls where they exist, and notable rulings, with who praised or criticized them, as reported.
• Amendments 1, 2 and 3: the official ballot text, what YES and NO mean in plain English, the 60% needed to pass, the fiscal impact, and named supporters and opponents on both sides.
• Three City of Sebastian charter questions, explained the same way.
• Positions on 14 issues voters here ask about, such as property taxes and Amendment 3, property insurance, the Indian River Lagoon, growth, housing costs and license-plate cameras. You can see each candidate's stance in a grid and read the source behind it.

Our nonpartisan rules

• No endorsements. The guide does not recommend or rate any candidate, party or ballot question.
• Ballot order. Candidates appear in the order printed on the ballot, not by party or name.
• Same fields for everyone. Every candidate gets the same sections. "No public position found" means we couldn't find a statement or record to cite. It is not a judgment.
• Only what can be cited. A position is listed only when we could cite the candidate's own statement, a questionnaire answer, an official record such as a vote, or a news report. Nothing is assumed from party, and no quotes are invented.
• Neutral design. Stance labels use teal and orange, not party red and blue.
• Both sides. Supporters and opponents of each question are listed as reported.

How we sourced it

The guide pulls from four kinds of sources, and every claim carries a small numbered link to the one it came from:

• Official records. The Indian River County Supervisor of Elections (all 37 sample-ballot styles, early voting, polling places, mail ballots) and the Florida Division of Elections (the state's candidate list).
• Candidates in their own words. Campaign websites, the League of Women Voters' VOTE411 questionnaire, and other candidate surveys.
• Public records. Votes in the Florida Legislature and Congress, and court opinions for the judges.
• News reporting. WUSF, WLRN, Florida Phoenix, Florida Politics, Vero News, Hometown News, Sebastian Daily and other outlets, cited for specific statements, votes and reactions.

We built it with MainSail Data's in-house AI systems, which did the research, organized the data and condensed long source text into short summaries. Each summary was checked against its source, with no new names, numbers or judgments added. The full source text is shown under "Details from source," so you can compare the two yourself.

How we checked it

On Oct. 27, after the guide was built, we ran a second, independent round of checks:

• Candidates against the state's official list. For every federal and state race, we compared the guide with the Florida Division of Elections' 2026 general-election candidate list. All 25 qualified candidates appear with the same party, none is missing, and no candidate who withdrew is listed.
• Ballot order is correct in every race.
• Every position is sourced. All 193 topic positions cite at least one source.
• Every link re-opened. Of the 364 source links, 345 open normally, including 4 that had moved and were corrected. TCPalm is behind a paywall. The other 18 sit on sites that block automated checks (such as senate.gov and congress.gov) and open normally in a browser, except one VOTE411 page the guide already marks as offline.
• Equal treatment. Major-party candidates got similar coverage: a median of 8 cited positions for Democrats and 9 for Republicans. Lesser-known and write-in candidates simply have less public information.
• Loaded language. We scanned every summary for slanted words. Where they appear, they are inside a candidate's own quoted or attributed words, never in the guide's own voice.

What we couldn't check, and known gaps

• Local contests (county, city and special districts) come from the Supervisor of Elections' sample ballots, which sit behind an address lookup, so we couldn't re-check them automatically. Always confirm your contests on your own official sample ballot.
• TCPalm coverage is paywalled, and we didn't get around the paywall.
• Judges: the Florida Bar ended its statewide retention poll in 2023, so the guide shows earlier polls and one 2026 local bar poll, each cited. The three appeals judges appointed in 2025 have little reported record yet.
• Little public information: for 12 candidates, mostly write-ins and local races, we found no public position on the tracked topics.
• Polling places aren't listed in the guide. Use the Supervisor of Elections' lookup.

Found a mistake?

Send us the claim and a source showing the correction through our contact page, and we'll review it and update the guide. The date of the latest update is shown at the top of the guide.