Sherri Hodies, Monroe County Supervisor of Elections, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about our elections.
Hodies is in Tallahassee right now and will be there for Florida Keys Days as well.
She said, “Right now we’re at the Florida Supervisor of Elections Advocacy Days, and there’s about 40 of us up here. Three of those people are from your Monroe County Supervisor of Elections Office, and I’m so happy to have my assistant and one of my managers up here. So today we’re going to be going over to the House and meeting with Representative Mooney. That’ll be here in less than an hour, and then later on this afternoon, we’ll be meeting with Senator Rodriguez. That’s around 3:30. We’re going to talk to them about three bills that have come up through the session. The most important one right now is the Elections bill HB 991, and then SB 1334, and it really strengthens our election integrity and our transparency. I’m very much about the election integrity and transparency, so I wanted to be up here to help support the team and help support our representatives. Both bills really look at significant structural changes that may require some new technology, some vendor coordination, those type of things, but it helps keep us at a national platinum which, Florida already operates at that platinum standard for election administration, so we just want to make sure that we continue to strengthen those laws and make sure that our state law lines with federal directives, but also to make sure that we can empower this law as we’re doing our daily activities. So that’s why my assistant and my manager are up here. They are on the front lines of Election Administration and they’ve got a lot of good thoughts to add up here at Tallahassee.”
Is there anything additionally that is being talked about, that they might want to implement statewide?
Hodies said, “Statewide we’re just really looking at voter verification, vote validation, making sure our list maintenance are not just up to date, but comply with new laws that might be coming out. Then, of course, you have our databases, making sure that they’re updated and that we raise those databases to the same level that’s expected. We’re really pushing to, again, add that affirmative notation on the certificate envelope of the vote by mail so that you can continue to have a continuing request for a vote by mail, where you wouldn’t have to do this every election cycle, and one of the caveats to this is to make sure that the voter has provided us with the personal identification information of that voter, and that we have not only been provided that, but we have verified it, so that that ballot is approved to be tabulated. So we’re just looking at those couple of things and talking with our representatives to let them know how much support and how much we’re behind those couple of bills.”
Election integrity is really important.
Hodies said, “We want our citizens and our voters to know that if you are a citizen, we want your voice to be heard. But voting is a sacred right, and that right is given to the United States citizens. So we want to make sure that we have vote validation and vote verification. We work very hard in Monroe County to really look at those things and make sure that we have a very clean database and that our list maintenance is very clean. So of course, we wanted to be up here so that we can share our thoughts coming from a small county. Even though we’re small, we’re big, and they need all the voters they can get in Florida. So this is very important that we’re here. We will be staying for Florida Keys Day, which actually kicks off tomorrow night. Again, we’ll be meeting with our representatives and moving through the House and moving through the Senate. We’ll also be going to a House committee meeting, which is Thursday, and then we’ll move through the Senate Ethics and elections committee meeting on Wednesday at 10:30, which is one of our big election bills that will be going through the Senate. So fun. Lots of first time learning for myself and a few other supervisors. So it’s just a good thing that we’re represented up here from Monroe County.”
The Monroe County Supervisor of Elections website has been revamped.
Hodies said, “We got that thing up and running very quickly, mostly because of our citizens and our voters, our constituents that came in and said, here’s what I think Sherri, or maybe, as I was talking to them when I was campaigning, I wrote their name down, and called them again to say, what do you see? What don’t you like? What do you like? And just that was a wonderful project. Betsy, one of our associates in the Key West office, does an excellent job, and I’ve heard nothing but great compliments. If there is anything wrong or someone can’t find something, just reach out to us, and we’ll do whatever we can to alter it, change it, make it more user friendly.”
With this being an election year, it will be a busy one.
Hodies said, “When you look at governor, and then you include the state cabinet, and then you come on down to county and so forth, there’s 22 open positions, so it’s going to be wonderful. I’m excited for this to be my first major election. I hope it goes as well as the Marathon elections did. I’m sure it will, because my team is just awesome. I can’t say enough about them.”
As of today, there are 54,240 active registered voters in the county.
Hodies said, “We have got to do better than what we’ve done in years past at midterms. Midterms are important. That is your state and your local government that sets the rules and the laws of which we have to follow. So please be election informed and be election ready. The only other thing let me just mention this, 52,000 letters went out with your blue vote by mail statewide form in it. So if you are a vote by mail voter, or if you want to become a vote by mail voter, please fill out that form and get it back in to us. Around 52,000 of them went out in the county last week. So get us busy. Give us those forms, even if you’re not a vote by mail voter, but you want to try it this time or things happen to where you might not be able to show up on Election Day, fill that out and let us help you be able to vote.”
For more information, click here: https://www.votemonroeflkeys.gov/