Sherri Hodies, Monroe County Supervisor of Elections, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about upcoming elections.
The new website is going to be coming soon.
Hodies said, “On Monday, October 6. It is so exciting. Betsy, my project manager here in the office, she has done an unbelievable job with this website. She has worked on it for six months. We have collaborated with a lot of people, making sure that we find the best website hosting and the best website programmers, because we cannot have any blackout times during elections. So that’s going to be really important for us going into 2026. Our new website is votemonroeflkeys.gov. Several years ago, all of the SOEs were supposed to go to a .gov website, which also would be a .gov email system. This hadn’t been done yet, so we took this on, and we got everything cleared through .gov, so all of our emails will also be changing. It has so many inputs into this website from both political parties, just individual folks, the media, radio, everybody has input something into this website. So it has been a huge community endeavor, and we’re just so proud of it. I can’t wait for people to call us and tell us what they think.”
The 2025 election is coming up in the city of Marathon on November 4.
Hodies said, “I sent out the vote by mail request with obviously, the help of all of my wonderful staff here, and got a lot of vote by mail requests in, not just for Marathon, but throughout the county. We had around 700 and actually, for Marathon, we sent out over 700 vote by mail requests already, so those are out in the mail to you guys. October 20 to October 31 is early voting, and that is at our Marathon office from 8:30 to 5, no weekends. Then November 4 is election day in Marathon. There are seven candidates running for three at large Marathon city council seats. So excited for that many people to want to look into serving their county and being ready to be on that on that ballot. I’ve seen the ballot, obviously, because we sent them out already for the vote by mail, folks, and it’s just very exciting. I’m humbled by being in this position and learning everything that there is to learn about elections, election integrity and making sure the process is always protected.”
The city of Layton will not need an election.
Hodies explained, “We started out with potentially four elections this year, and we ended up with one.”
What does book closing on October 6 mean?
Hodies said, “Book closing means that the books have closed, so these are the folks that can vote. So once that book closes, nothing else can happen. We’ll accept the paperwork in. But we cannot move forward with anything else. The books are closed and we’re ready to go.”
If anyone has gotten married or moved, the voting office should be notified.
Hodies said, “They will always go to the DMV, obviously, to change things on their driver’s license, but it is so important for them to let us know what’s going on, too. Unfortunately, if there’s a death in the family, they can contact us, and then also any name changes, address changes, because if you are a vote by mail person, you want to make sure that your address is correct. You want to make sure that that address is correct when you come in to vote, because those things are looked at and of course, your name.”
What if someone moves into the county?
Hodies said, “There is a system where if they go into the tax collector’s office, and they’re coming down to Monroe County, Sam captures all of that that is all sent over to us, and then once we put them in as a registered voter here, it does cancel within the state of Florida, their voter registration in that other county, so the state of Florida is like the epitome of election integrity and making sure that we have all these systems cross checking and cross reflecting what is going on and where these people actually live, so that they are not voting twice within the state.”
What if they’re coming from another state?
Hodies said, “That is incumbent upon the voter, and when we find out, then we call the other state. There’s just not as good of a track record, a recording system throughout the states. Let me compare it to there were people long ago, maybe 20, 30 years ago, that would have driver’s license in all kinds of different states. That doesn’t happen now, because the states all talk, and at one point, I think that’s what’s going to happen with voter registration is we’ll have a better handle on it, but when we find out, if I get any complaints, I research it, I talk to the Division of Elections, the director, and there’s a decision made, the divisional, or myself, we’ll call that other state and find out where does this person live?”
Maintaining the voter roll is really a big part of what the Supervisor of Election does.
Hodies said, “Yes, every day, and then twice a year, we bounce things off of a national database. Now we hadn’t been doing that, and so we started doing that, and we found several hundred that we needed to clean up, and it might have been, a last name that we reached out to the voter, hey, we need information. It might have been two or three different addresses. So where do you really live? There’s just all kinds of different things to really clean it up. Apartment numbers may not have been correct, Avenue, Street, the direction, Oceanside, gulf, lots and lots of things that we have to do to really keep those voter rolls clean.”
A lot happens behind the scenes to maintain election integrity.
Hodies confirmed, “Yes. When I first started working here, my staff said people think we don’t do anything until the election comes and that’s not true. I said, I’m sure it isn’t. And boy, I have just been amazed at what all three of the offices do to keep things cleaned up, to make sure we’re doing the right thing, to follow the law, cross our t’s, dot our i’s and then also to move the offices forward, as I said during my campaign, these folks have to have ideas that have not been completely looked at, because there’s so much to do in these offices. So I asked them for what their ideas were and we have really gotten started. One thing is, in January, you’re going to start hearing more and more about our veteran’s program. You’re also going to hear more about the Florida disability rights. We are going to partner with people across our spectrums, to really unite and really look at anybody who could be disenfranchised, so that we can bring them in, teach them how to vote, show them so that they’re not concerned or afraid or, it looks different. So let’s really help the folks with disabilities, and then let’s honor those veterans. So those are some great things that we’re going to start doing in January of 2026.”
When is the release of the new website scheduled?
Hodies said, “Monday. Again, I have to give a big shout out to my staff in Key West, especially Betsy. She has just done an awesome job. Anybody can come out, and I take them on tours. I show them the tabulators. I show them our systems, which is our verification system when you come in to vote. I take them through the whole office. I want to thank the voters. I am humbly, humbly thankful for this job. I absolutely love it, and I hope that the voters feel even more confident. We just want to be that election office that everyone can trust, and that is what we continue to forge ahead with.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keyselections.org/