Write-in Lindsay MacDonald Forces Rare Competition in Brooksville School Board Race

Brooksville residents woke to a surprise election contest on Feb. 23, 2026, after Lindsay MacDonald put up signs around town declaring herself a write-in candidate for one of two school board seats, a move town clerk and registrar Amber Bakeman called “an unusual situation.” The signs convert what had appeared to be a formality into an active contest ahead of the town’s March ballot.

Incumbents Sam Vaughan and Annie Silver filed the necessary paperwork at the end of 2025 to get on the town’s March ballot, setting up two seats that had initially looked uncontested. With MacDonald’s visible write-in campaign in place, voters will now see at least three names in play for those two openings.

Annie Silver was appointed by Brooksville’s school board to fill an empty seat in April 2025 and filed to stay on the ballot at the end of 2025. Silver holds a BS in Agricultural Systems and the Environment from the University of California Davis, has lived in Brooksville for 20 years with her husband and two daughters, and has worked as a farmer, a private chef, and now as an administrator of her husband’s design landscaping business. One daughter is in college and the other attends George Stevens Academy; both daughters previously attended Brooksville Elementary School. “I want to give back to the town and school for the education they received,” Silver said in her candidate profile.

Sam Vaughan is listed as the other incumbent who filed late in 2025 to appear on the March ballot; no additional biographical details for Vaughan were available in the materials supplied. All three school board candidates were interviewed as part of the candidate profiles compiled for the town contest, though only Silver’s full profile details are present in the record reviewed here.

An original town summary preserved in source material read verbatim: “A rare contested race for two of Brooksville’s school board seats has developed after Lindsay MacDonald announced a write‑in campaign, turning what appeared to be uncontested sea” — the sentence remains truncated in the supplied notes. The reporting packet also included unrelated election material from other jurisdictions, including lines such as “Brookville Council Vote for 3 MICHAEL HUGHES JARED LEDFORD DARREN MCNEW This is not a contested race,” indicating additional election compilations were part of the source mix.

Last month’s local reporting noted Brooksville was already seeing an uncommon level of electoral competition, with the town slated to have its first competitive race for select board in over 40 years. With two school board seats on the March ballot, the combination of Vaughan’s and Silver’s late-2025 filings, Silver’s April 2025 appointment, and MacDonald’s active write-in signage has produced a rare, closely watched local contest officials and voters will resolve at the ballot box.