Sherri Hodies, Supervisor of Elections for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the election.
Work is continuing with the upcoming election.
Hodies said, “The election is November 4. It’s very exciting. Marathon, their City Council is elected at large, and so there are three at large positions, and we have seven candidates that have completely qualified. So their qualifying period is up, and everybody is good there. Early voting for Marathon is October 20, and then the election again is November 4.”
There is a new website in progress for the Supervisor of Elections.
Hodies said, “We need to go to a .gov site. Actually most of the people had done this a few years ago. So when I came into the office, I got started on this, worked with all of the entities I needed to work with, and this is ready to go. It’s been ready for a few months, but we’re going to roll it out when we roll out the new website, if anybody still uses keyselections.gov, it’s going to just simply direct it automatically right to our new website. So no worries there. But we’re hoping that that comes out October 1. Everything is geared towards that. We actually should be done by September 15. This has been a community effort. I have gotten a hold of several people within the community that has helped give input to create this website. Of course, my staff is just unbelievable that has taken this on to do. But I just wanted to get it out there that we’ve had a lot of community involvement in this new website.”
Is vote by mail still an option?
Hodies said, “For Marathon and Layton, we sent out vote by mail request, and we’re getting them back in by the hundreds. So we’re excited about that. We’re probably up to about 300 just on doing that initiative. The Republican and Democrat parties are out there really pushing people to remember your vote by mail expired at the end of last year. So if you are a vote by mail voter in the city of Key West, let’s say, you do not have a vote by mail on file. It expired. So everyone needs to get their vote by mail request into us so that we can be ready for Marathon, maybe Layton, and also to be ready for 2026.”
There was a petition for a recall vote for Commissioner Lissette Carey in the city of Key West, but those petitions actually did not comply with state regulations.
Hodies explained, “If people go on to the Florida Statutes 100.361 which is called the municipal recall statutes, in there, there is law that says that all signed petition form shall be filed at the same time. That was done. No later than 30 days after the date on which the first signature was obtained. So when we got the petitions, of course, we put them in date order by when the voter signed them, and the very first one was June 6. They were not turned into the Key West clerk until July 23. This makes all of them late, and so we went by the law. We made a good decision. As I have told people, it is not a technicality, it is the law. But I just want to say, both sides of this issue worked hard. They put their heart into something that they believed in, whether they were for the recall or against the recall. I feel like the democratic process was followed and the law was followed. So if they start it up again, that’s up to them. But no matter what, this office will cross their t’s and dot their i’s and we will go by the law.”
The office of the Supervisor of Elections continues to support veterans.
Hodies said, “Thank you to all of our veterans out there. My heart is very much for the veterans of our county, for our entire country and what I noticed is we do not have a veterans wall of honor, and so we’re going to start that in January of 2026, we’re starting to get out some information on that now, and basically it’s two programs. One is called the Wall of Honor, where your veteran, your family member who’s a veteran, even the veteran their self, can fill out a form on our new website and then scan a photo of, preferably them in their uniform. Then we will make sure that they are all cropped to five by seven, and we’re going to place those on our walls in each of the offices. So in Key West, if you’re closest to Key West, that’s where your veteran will be. Same with Marathon. Now up in Key Largo, our office is smaller, so they are working with the Veterans Administration, who’s in the same government building up there, Murray Nelson, and they’re going to come up with a wall that we can actually utilize for this project. So the Key Largo office is very excited to be working with the Veterans Administration. It’s not kicked off yet. We are in the beginning stages of this program. Then the second program is when you get your I voted stickers, ours have got a little conch shell on them, and they’re beautiful. We’re going to offer yet another sticker, and it’s going to be called the I voted for my veteran sticker, and there’ll be a line and you can put what veteran that you’re voting for. So when these veteran stickers come out in 2026, my sticker will say that I’m voting for my father in law, Perry Hodies Jr., and I will wear that sticker proudly. I’m also going to have the folks that do want to have the sticker fill out another one and put it on our board, and then those boards in all the precincts will be having a photo taken of the board, and that board will go up on our website. So my hope is that we have a lot of I voted for my veteran stickers on these boards, so that when it goes up on the website, people can see how important the Monroe County voters feel about their veteran.”
What else is coming up before the election?
Hodies said, “The ballot intake stations, where our voters put their vote by mails, in those ballot intake stations, we’re going to move those inside the offices of the early voting areas. So what we’re trying to do here is think about the safety of the two people that sit out here all day long, in the heat, in the wind and the rain. So we’re going to bring those inside in our five early voting locations, of course, the three offices, and then Islamorada library, and then also Big Pine Community Park. So we’re going to bring those inside. People will have to get out of their cars and walk their vote by mail in. I don’t think anyone’s going to have a problem with that, especially when we think about our veterans who got up every day, and they lived in the bunkers. They ran to their tanks. They ran to their planes. It’s okay to get to park your car and come on in and put your vote by mail into the vote by mail ballot intake station. And also, we are on social media. We’re on Instagram, we are on Facebook, and as of Monday, we will have our first YouTube series Behind the Ballot. So we’re going to go behind the ballot and find out what all is going on in the office. That social media is Monroe County Supervisor of Elections. That’s how you get a hold of us through social media.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keyselections.org/