Sherri Hodies, Supervisor of Elections for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys yesterday morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
A number of people are getting ready for midterm elections in November and getting ready for mail-in ballots.
Hoodies said, “At the very end of February, we sent out over 51,000 vote by mail request. And why we did that is Florida Statute 101.62, it’s a very large statute, and it talks about requesting your vote by mail and how to cast your vote by mail. So the first thing I want to say is there are some people that are still confused on the vote by mail process. You don’t have to be in the military, you don’t have to be away on vacation, or maybe you have an upcoming surgery. Vote by Mail is for anyone who wants to vote by mail. We have three ways of voting in the state of Florida, vote by mail, voting at the precinct, and early voting. I know some people disagree with maybe one, like the vote by mail part of those methods, but it is state law. We do have to make sure that people are informed, and that state law changed a little bit a couple years ago. All vote by mail request at the end of the general election have to be expired, by December 31 of the general election year. So 2024 It was December 31 2024 we had to expire all those requests. So you have to request for every election year. And that is what happened. We went ahead and sent out 51,000 requests to all of our voters, in case they want to vote by mail. They don’t have to. But in case they want to and then also to inform them that the state law changed, and that’s what my letter was about.”
If you miss the vote by mail deadline, you have to vote in person.
Hoodies said it can be “either early voting or going to your own precinct to vote at your own precinct. The last day to request a vote by mail ballot to be mailed to them is August 6, at 5pm, so obviously, we’re doing this early, because right now, we are into candidate petitions. The candidates for that are out there that are trying to get their petitions in. We’re also into the vote by mail request that we’re loading up into our database. So it’s very important that we get all those in as soon as possible.
There is also a qualifying period for Monroe County offices.
Hodies said, “As we get into the qualifying for the rest of the candidates, your deadline to submit is May 11 at noon. And then that qualifying period is June 8 to June 12, noon to noon. And those qualifying periods for those offices would be your city of Key Colony Beach, your city of Key West, any kind of special districts, and then all of your county offices. So we’re talking about school board, the Monroe County Commissioners. Any of that has to be done, your petitions have to be done May 11, and your qualifying period is June 8 to June 12.”
If the SAVE Act at the federal level would pass, what would that mean for elections?
Hoodies said, “It’s going to be very difficult. So what we’re hoping for is Governor DeSantis and his legislature have come up with a bill. It’s called HB 991 that did pass the House. It passed the Senate. Governor DeSantis should be signing it into law July, 1 of this year. They took six identifications out of the law and they kept the other six in the law. So they kept in your driver’s license, your Florida State ID. They kept in your military ID, government ID, also your conceal and carry, so those are our identifications that you can show us. And they also kept in passport. That doesn’t mean you have to have a passport, any of those six items you can show us to be able to vote. So the SAVE Act is a little bit different than that. What we’re hoping for as supervisors of elections is that the federal government sees what we’re doing here in the state of Florida. We are making it to where US citizens can only vote and that it’s not going to be difficult to vote, because we almost all have one of those six items. If you drive, you have a driver’s license. If you’re not driving, you can go get a Florida State ID. So what we’re hoping for here in the state of Florida is since our legislature passed HB 991 that we will be in compliance and we won’t have to have anything to do with this feedback. But again, that is still up in the air. We don’t know how that’s going to affect us.”
Anyone looking to vote needs to be registered.
Hoodies said, “Once you bring in your voter registration, we put that in our database, it does go up to the state. The state does check for citizenship, and they send it back down to us. If the person is a citizen, it goes right through the process, and you’re in our database, and you’re ready to vote. We must have people that are US citizens voting. We are checking our voter rolls on a daily basis. We are listening to the state law. We’re complying with that law. If there’s any in our database, it is not a US citizen, I have a process to go through that. It’s been the same process. It’s been in the Florida State law for a long time, and we adhere to that process because it is the state law. I wanted to say, you do have to have a voter registration in by before 29 days before each election. Our books close 29 days before each election. When you get on the website, you can go into your voter registration and make sure you’re good to go. You can also go in there under the vote by mail category, and you can see if you have requested a vote by mail. You’ll also be able to see through a scan code that we scan when we send you out your ballot. You will see when your ballot comes back into us, and you can also see when we have cast your ballot. So that’s really important to go on that website under vote by mail and be able to see the transition of your vote by mail ballot.”
For more information, click here: https://www.votemonroeflkeys.gov/