As part of our commitment to providing you with what you need to make an informed decision in the 2026 elections, News 6 joined with the News Collaborative of Central Florida to present the Voting Central Florida 2026 Voter’s Guide.
Tuesday, Aug. 18 is the Florida Statewide Primary election, a mix of party primaries and nonpartisan local elections, such as school board races, judicial races, and county commission races in some counties.
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[ELECTION 2026: Make sure you’re eligible to vote|How to vote by mail|Election Myths]
Florida has a closed primary system, which means only members of a political party may vote in party primaries. To be eligible, a voter had to identify with that party by July 20.
However, judicial races and local races, for the most part, are open to all registered voters, regardless of political party.
Everything you need to know in order to vote in the Aug. 18 Statewide Primary, including how to vote by mail, vote early, and vote on Election Day, can be found in our Election 2026 section HERE.
Volusia County Council At-Large seat
Volusia County Council members are elected in nonpartisan races, which means all voters can vote in the election, regardless of party affiliation.
Since there are three candidates in the race, the top vote-getter must get more than 50% of the vote (50%+1) in order to win outright. Otherwise, the top two candidates will go to a runoff in November.
The county council at-large seat represents the entire county. You can see a map of all of the districts HERE.
The News Collaborative of Central Florida created a list of common questions to ask the candidates. Questionnaires were sent to all candidates.
Not all of the candidates responded. Where candidates did not respond, we have filled out the information to the best of our abilities.
News 6 compiled the candidate responses for Volusia County Council, emailing and calling the candidates over several weeks. Responses were edited for spelling and grammar, but otherwise left intact.
Nancy Miller
WEBSITE: www.NancyMillerforVolusiaCounty.com
Ms. Miller did not answer our questionnaire. Miller does have a profile on the Volusia County Supervisor of Elections website, which you can read HERE.
Mike Poniatowski
WEBSITE: mikep4volusia.com
Poniatowski also has a profile on the Volusia County Supervisor of Elections website, which you can read HERE.
Top issues in your race
If elected, what are the THREE most pressing problems you want to address, and what do you suggest to solve them? In the boxes below, please list each issue and how you will address them:
YOUR NUMBER 1 ISSUE and how you plan to address it: Property Tax Reform. Recent polling by the University of North Florida shows that a strong majority of voters want some form of property tax reform, with approval hovering right around the 60% mark, which is the threshold needed to pass, and some are as high at 80%. Our leaders need to plan for this eventuality now. Prudent planning should tell us where to make required cuts, with taxpayer input! We cannot wait until next year. If reform does not pass, then this will be a great exercise to learn where cuts in spending can be made to save us real money and reduce the tax burden on our citizens but especially our elderly on fixed incomes who own homesteaded property and the young, trying to build a future of investment by purchasing their forever home, like our family did 40 years ago! As an efficiency expert running large organizations and teams, I am ready to make those identified necessary cuts to make government lean and more responsive to its citizens. This will be Ozempic for Government, and the citizens deserve some form of relief. I will follow their lead, honestly and transparently, educating our citizens on what to expect. Either way, we will make meaningful cuts while keeping public safety and infrastructure front and center.
YOUR NUMBER 2 ISSUE and how you plan to address it: Comprehensive County-Wide Storm Water Management. Decades of building, sprawl, and lack of maintenance or intuitive design have left residents knee-deep at times in flood waters from rains and storms across our great county. Homes, businesses and roads continue to be inundated by what seem to be ordinary summer afternoon thunderstorms. We need to form a comprehensive Storm Water Management Authority by ordinance and eventually Charter Amendment, to make sure that our 16 municipalities and the county become willing partners in an ongoing endeavor to begin meaningful repairs and innovative designs to protect our properties and investments to Keep Volusia Dry. The time for dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in repetitive studies to out-of-state consultants is over. It’s time for local experts and residents to identify fixes that will make a difference. We must be able to drain our canals regardless of winds and tides. We can do this without additional taxes
YOUR NUMBER 3 ISSUE and how you plan to address it: Land Development and Conservation. We can see across this county, wide tracts of what was once wide open, wooded land being bulldozed, drained, filled and loaded with slab-on-grade single-unit homes. Once this land is gone, it can never be replaced, and the damage done is irreversible. Green spaces help regulate our world’s temperature, provide us with fresh oxygen and ingest carbon dioxide. It gives our rains and stormwater a place to sit, evaporate and percolate into our very endangered aquifer. We are sucking more water out of it than can be replaced and billions of gallons of water just run off of our impervious surfaces, eventually making it to our rivers and oceans, not doing us any good. We must embrace Low Impact Development, prevent sprawl and heavily limit up-zoning to allow more units per acres then currently zoned for. It’s our children’s and grandchildren’s futures we are gambling with. We need to revisit the concept of Rural Boundaries and Keep Volusia Forever – FOREVER! Full Stop! We overwhelmingly voted for this program twice, and if we continue to be blessed with the revenue to sustain it, we must.
FOR INCUMBENTS: Why do you deserve to be re-elected in this race? FOR CHALLENGERS AND OPEN SEATS: Why do you deserve to be elected in this race? This is an open seat
According to a University of North Florida poll, Floridians say affordability is their top issue. What are your solutions for dealing with Florida’s affordability issue? If we can tackle the Homestead Property Tax issue, that’s the first step in the right direction. If developers continue to get tax breaks, which I am firmly against, they must bring to market homes and apartments that don’t break the bank of first-time home buyers or renters who are looking for their forever homes. Homeowners insurance rates are also part of the problem. We must work with our state regulators to reduce these rates. We must also equip our students with the skills necessary to make more than a living wage, especially in the trades. HVAC, electrical, carpentry, roofing, mechanical skills and mechanics. Healthcare is also very important as our baby boomers will need more healthcare. All these skills do not require a four-year degree and can be taught starting in high school and finished in trade schools or on the job, with young workers already making a living.
Will you vote YES or NO on the constitutional amendment to slash property taxes and explain your position. How would you replace lost revenue – fees and/or service reductions? I will vote yes on this amendment. Government spending needs a reset. People need relief. We need to tighten our belts and start with providing our core government services. We, of course, will have the latitude of charging certain fees for things like Fire and EMS or those Law Enforcement services exempted from the amendment. If we plan prudently, we will make government stronger and more transparent. Schools will not be affected.
Utility costs are rising for customers in Florida, and the proliferation of data centers is expected to exacerbate that issue. How should Florida’s utility regulators respond? This is my statement on Data Centers. Governments, at every level, must do what is in the best interest of their citizens and the citizens are the ones who decide that, in the end. They do this by making sure that their voices are heard by their elected leaders, and if they are ignored, they change the government at the next election. That is the way it must be for every major decision and undertaking that may have far-reaching effects, in time, money and resources. Especially if payment for such an undertaking falls on the backs of the taxpayers to fund.
As far as Data Centers are concerned, there are only estimates as to how many will be needed across our country; this is called speculation! Let’s not build them everywhere without a clear, scientific understanding of where they need to be placed and why. Hyperscale data centers can consume thousands of acres to build, use the equivalent energy of a small city to run, drink up to five million gallons of water a day to cool, emit carbon, methane, heat and noise (24/7) into the environment and change the face of the community or ecosystem they are built in, FOREVER!
Hyperscale data centers should stand up their own power generation plants (we can get into what kind later) and use an alternative cooling system that does not depend on fresh water.
Florida and Volusia County do not have the excess water to allocate to such plants; we surely will not pay for the energy infrastructure to power them, and land is somewhat scarce as we attempt to preserve what is left of our open spaces.If you consider that information is nothing more than electrons, energy, understand that this energy moves at the speed of light. (E=MC2)
Therefore, we don’t necessarily need these data centers in our communities/neighborhoods/state! They don’t bring jobs, AI itself will run the center, maintained by a skeleton staff of humans, and I’m sure these plants will be constructed in such a way as to allow robots to eventually service and change out components as necessary. The labor to build them will be “imported” and leave when the plant is completed. The materials for the build will not be locally sourced for sure as the builder will not be running to the local building supply store for 10 million self-tapping screws, 60 million steel framing beams and temporary concrete plants will be built on site. The only local resource will be the land, at the demise of the trees, open spaces and wildlife habitat.
Amazon, Meta, and Google, among others, have been downsizing in the tens of thousands of jobs very recently and we know Amazon for one is using robots for product fulfillment. Just wait a few more years until those Amazon trucks are autonomous and little robots pop out and drive your packages to the front door. They also have plans to mostly depend on robots in every aspect of product fulfillment. Their current goal is to automate 75% of its operations by 2033, so any short-term job growth will be rolled back when their next-generation Proteus Robot is rolled out. You get the picture. These are community killers. They will speed up the ability to downsize the human component across the board. The mega wealthy will continue that upward trend, and the middle class will become more unemployed /unemployable.
That’s why, as an aside, we need to shed this mindset of needing a 4-year degree! We need to bolster our TRADES! Electricians, HVAC, Plumbers, Mechanics, skilled craftsmen, carpenters, roofers, health care technicians, real humans who will be sorely needed in the future to service the thousands of homes that exist today and those that are on the drawing board! That’s where our communities’ vested interest lies. Equipping our students with the mental and manual skills to keep our communities humming well into the future, while making more than a living wage.
And we want affordable beef; let’s keep the beef industry local! Florida has had a strong beef industry for generations, and we still need that industry today! Save that pastureland, graze them cattle, feed them cattle, and send them to market locally. I’m waiting on my first delivery of beef cattle to free-range on my property! FACT! Who will want to live within five miles of an ever-existent hum of air exchangers, coolers, etc.? The wildlife will run off and if it’s near anywhere around here, who’s absorbing the millions of gallons of stormwater runoff from a 2000-acre plant? Not this guy, or his neighbors.
If we really need them, put them in the barren desert away from everything! Ship the information where it needs to go, remember (E=MC2), improve the technology so it’s not so dependent on water, which is meant to sustain organic life! Hell no!
What do you think is the biggest environmental issue your government should address in Florida? The unmitigated destruction of green spaces for fill and build sprawl, which in turn drastically reduces the availability of water to percolate into and maintain the Floridian Aquifer, our source of fresh water and life. This also leads to devastating flooding across Florida. The solution is not wastewater recharge or injecting anything into our underground spaces. All Wetlands must be OFF LIMITS to any type of construction. The PUBLIC NEED is to preserve these land areas as they are our flood barriers, nurseries for aquatic life and water percolators. We also need to stop spraying herbicides and insecticides into our bodies of water. They are killing more than they are intended for.
Barry Powell
WEBSITE: www.facebook.com/p/Barry-Powell-For-Volusia-County-Council-61590056560637/
Powell doesn’t have a profile on the Volusia County Supervisor of Elections website.
Top issues in your race
If elected, what are the THREE most pressing problems you want to address, and what do you suggest to solve them? In the boxes below, please list each issue and how you will address them:
YOUR NUMBER 1 ISSUE and how you plan to address it: Flooding. I would put together a team to compile a Comprehensive Flood Risk Assessment that would conduct and publish an up-to-date, GIS-based countywide flood model that integrates: stormwater infrastructure, wetlands, sea-level rise, groundwater, rainfall patterns, and future development scenarios.
YOUR NUMBER 2 ISSUE and how you plan to address it: Housing: If elected as a Volusia County Councilman.I understand that addressing countywide housing requires a clear, actionable, and voter-focused plan that spans affordability, supply, quality, and resilience. This comes with affordable housing, diverse, and durable housing to ensure a range of housing types that are affordable across income levels, ages, and family sizes.
YOUR NUMBER 3 ISSUE and how you plan to address it: Full accountability and transparency of every taxpayer dollar spent. Work toward more fiscal discipline and transparency: Every dollar spent should be justified, measurable, and publicly auditable. Also providing open data and accessibility to be easy to find, understand, and use by residents with varying levels of expertise. Lastly, public accountability with clear metrics, independent review, and regular community input.
FOR INCUMBENTS: Why do you deserve to be re-elected in this race? FOR CHALLENGERS AND OPEN SEATS: Why do you deserve to be elected in this race? As a candidate, I believe that I deserve to be elected because I would deliver on my core promise: Honest, People-First Leadership. I am for the people. I’ll put Volusia’s people first in every decision. I’ll be open about what I am doing and why, with plain language they can understand. I’ll continue to listen. I’ll hold regular meetings countywide in diverse neighborhoods and speak with the people who voted me into office because they elected me to represent them.
According to a University of North Florida poll, Floridians say affordability is their top issue. What are your solutions for dealing with Florida’s affordability issue? I believe that affordable, attainable living for all Volusia County residents, we have to address housing, transportation, and household costs together, not in isolation. We should prioritize policies that deliver results quickly while building long-term resilience and opportunity.
If I were elected, the solution that could be brought to the table would be to make the county more affordable for families, renters, small businesses, and seniors by tackling housing, transportation, energy, and services together. I wouldn’t have all the answers but I would put together a team to help address the issues.
Will you vote YES or NO on the constitutional amendment to slash property taxes and explain your position. How would you replace lost revenue – fees and/or service reductions? Honestly, I would have to speak against the property taxes issue because I believe that on the surface it sounds good, but we should not aid and abet this because we already have skyrocketing home values and many Volusia County Residents have voiced their concerns about the affordability of owning their own home. For all levies other than school district levies. This Property Tax Elimination would have harmful economic consequences. Therefore, I think as voters we must carefully weigh the consequences and I feel it could leave not only our county, but the entire state worse off
Utility costs are rising for customers in Florida, and the proliferation of data centers is expected to exacerbate that issue. How should Florida’s utility regulators respond? In my personal opinion, I can only share my thoughts as a lifelong Volusia County resident, and I can’t really speak on behalf of all Floridians. However, I believe it would be helpful to convene an affordable task force that would include consumer advocates, local nonprofits and utility staff.
What do you think is the biggest environmental issue your government should address in Florida? I firmly believe Volusia County’s Top Environmental issue is coastal flooding and water quality pressures from sea-level rise, stronger storms, and watershed pollution.