Sherri Hodies, the supervisor of elections for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the office.
Hodies had a number of goals she planned to reach when she was elected.
She said, “We are doing so great at the office. I’ve just learned so much, and especially from my team of 10 staff members. They have a little over 105 years of experience, and I tell you, they always say they don’t care who’s sitting in that chair, because they are loyal to our voters. I want our voters to come in and meet my staff members up in Key Largo and Marathon and then in Key West, because they really need to meet the people that are behind the elections, that are making sure that their vote matters and that their vote counts. I am so proud of this team, and just so thrilled that I was elected into this position. I just, I absolutely love this job.”
Transparency is incredibly important.
Hodies said, “Those things were implemented right at the beginning. We had more of a flat organization there. So I kind of started to build up the organization with an Assistant Supervisor of Elections, then three managers for each office, and then gave them the ability to manage their office. We went to some training events. I’ve sent some of my staff members to voter registration roundtable. We went to summer conference. I’ve been going to certification classes for my masters of Florida Certification for Elections. Through all that training, we’re also networking more with the other counties and making sure, what are those counties doing? What can we do to streamline our processes? Those counties are learning from us too. So it’s been very transparent, open and just building the team and finding out what they want their purpose to be and what they want their goals to be, and then looking at what their strengths are and aligning that with what we need to have done in the office, putting the right people in the right job at the right time, and I think that my staff is happy about that. I think you’re going to see even more transparency, a smoother, streamlined process, not that it wasn’t before, but there’s always things that we can improve on, and those staff members know what needs to be improved on, and I’m just helping them make it a reality.”
What elections are coming up?
Hodies said, “I keep trying to get this information out to everyone. We do have those three elections for 2025 early voting for Marathon and Key West is October 20. The elections for all three municipalities are November 4, and the problem that we face, and why we need so much help to get this information out, is vote by mail request expired and were deleted on December 31 of last year. So instead of sitting out there with around 12,000 vote by mail requests, especially on the presidential election, we have 509. So we have got to get the word out. I need my voters to spread the word to just flood us with vote by mail requests so that the folks in Key West, Layton and Marathon can actually vote the way that they want. If they’re a vote by mail voter, they are not going to get a vote by mail ballot if they do not get the vote by mail request in and so you have until, I think it’s September. We need to get as many vote by mail requests in, especially in those precincts that are voting for this year and those vote by mail requests will be valid through the gubernatorial election for 2026. Layton is the council members. There’s three of them for district one, three and five. Marathon has at large council members, and there are three of those. And then Key West has a referendum that will be on the ballot. No candidates. Just the referendum.”
What does book closing October 6 mean?
Hodies said, “That means we’re finished with accepting any candidate, any other referendum. Petitions have to be in all before that, you have to be a valid candidate, filed and ready to go.”
The website is also being worked on.
Hodies said, “It is under construction, and it’s exciting. I got to see the preliminary part of the website, and it is really looking good. It’s going to be cleaner, more of 21st Century. It is not going to have a lot of clutter around it. You are going to be able to navigate a lot easier. I went to both main political parties, and I have people in those political parties that are giving me their input as we walk through this. July 7 is going to be another big date for our team, along with our target audience, which is those political parties, but also other community members that have said, hey, Sherri, I want to be part of this too. So July 7 is going to be another big date for us, with a roll out of the new website. Coupled with that, Monroe County is now on social media. We have Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, and you can get all this updated information by going to Monroe County SOE on any of those platforms. And as far as my understanding, this is the first time that Monroe County has social media. With that, you will get an opportunity to sign up for our newsletter, and you will see different videos about election connection, connecting you to our elections and then behind the ballot for transparency. I promise that we are going to be open and transparent. So we have started behind the ballot series of videos where I take you behind the scenes and show you things that you might want to know.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keyselections.org/