About FreshTake.vote
FreshTake.vote is an automated, statewide election turnout tracker that follows voter turnout across Florida's 67 counties as an election unfolds.
The tracker was launched in 2022 and is built and maintained at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. It gathers turnout figures as counties report them and presents them in one place, so voters, journalists and researchers can see how participation is shaping up statewide and in their own communities without checking dozens of separate county websites.
FreshTake.vote is a project of Fresh Take Florida, the college's student news service. Fresh Take Florida produces investigative and political reporting on Florida's state government, the Legislature and other issues of statewide, regional or national interest, and its stories are published by WUFT and news outlets across Florida and the country. The turnout tracker extends that mission by giving reporters and the public a nonpartisan, data-driven view of every election.
Who we are
Ted Bridis
Michael and Linda Connelly Senior Lecturer in Investigative Reporting, UF College of Journalism and Communications
Ted Bridis oversees Fresh Take Florida. Before joining UF in 2018, he was editor of the Associated Press' Washington investigative team, where his reporters won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting on NYPD intelligence programs. He led AP efforts that won the Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Award in 2011 and 2014, and he received the 2014 Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics.
During two decades with the AP in Washington, Bridis covered technology, national security and the Justice Department, and served as one of the news cooperative's analysts responsible for projecting winners in national elections. He is an officer on the board of the Florida Society of News Editors and chairs its Sunshine Committee, which tracks threats to Florida's public records law. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri.
Brandon Meyer
Developer and Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Journalism, UF College of Journalism and Communications
Brandon Meyer built and runs FreshTake.vote. A 2019 journalism graduate of UF, he returned to the college in 2021 on a data fellowship and built Florida Data, a statewide public records warehouse used by more than 1,200 journalists in more than 80 newsrooms. He teaches courses in application development and public records.
Meyer previously worked at the Tampa Bay Times as a digital designer and producer. Before that, he spent five years in Iraq and Afghanistan designing and building data networks for NATO and the U.S. Marine Corps. His work focuses on data acquisition and analysis, full-stack web development, automated reporting systems and artificial intelligence.