Sherri Hodies, supervisor of elections for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in elections.
There are three elections this November.
Hodies said, “We have Marathon, that municipality will be having an election, as well as Key Colony Beach and also Key West and those elections are on November 4 this year. There is a potential of early voting. The municipalities can decide if they want to have early voting or not. I just want to make sure the voters out there are aware that vote by mail requests were purged December 31 last year, and so for those municipalities, those voters are going to be getting vote by mail request in the mail. Be looking for those in the next two months.”
A lot of preparations go into making those elections happen.
Hodies said, “We start those preparations in February, definitely March. So the ball is rolling, and you’re going to be seeing those municipalities place their advertisements in the newspapers, so all of the voters are aware. We’re going to help them with making sure we get the word out. Again, please be looking for your vote by mail request. Get them back into us so we can make sure that you do get your vote by mail ballot in the mail.”
There’s a great team in the supervisor of elections office.
Hodies said, “I’ll tell you, this team is just unbelievable. I clearly did not understand how this team completely works for the voter. They are so loyal to this office, and therefore so loyal to the voters. They are just excellent. I’ve kept all 10 of them. We work together as a team. We meet monthly and talk about everything, and right now, in fact, some of my staff are at a round table meeting where with their expertise, all of the things that they’ve learned over 34 years and on down, they’re going to be giving input into different programs that are going to come down through the pipeline. So I’ve got three of my staff at a round table meeting right now.”
Social media will be coming to the supervisor of elections.
Hodies said, “The social media platform is something that I promised also during my campaign. We’re going to have a full scale, comprehensive social media outreach platform that does begin tomorrow. It will involve Facebook, Instagram, as well as monthly newsletters. Then we’re going to have podcasts and videos that will be uploaded onto YouTube. Those series are going to be called Election Connection, because we want everyone to be connected to our elections. The second series will be called Behind the Ballot. So we want to go behind the ballots in that series to show everyone what we are doing on a daily and monthly basis. It helps with integrity. It helps with transparency, which is what I promised during my campaign.”
The website will also be spruced up.
Hodies said, “The website is going to be a complete overhaul. Right now it says that our website is under construction, and it is on the back side. Our voters are going to start seeing things in the next month, of things rolling out on their side where they can visibly see that it’s going to be more user friendly. It’s going to help them be able to navigate, obviously, a lot easier. A lot of us have went out into the community asking what does our voters want to see with the website? So if any of you out there have any ideas for the website, please give me a call at 305-292-3416, and let me know what you want to see, because we are going through the construction pretty heavily right now and getting ready to get it all out there to you.”