BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
GREEN COVE SPRINGS— The U.S. Election Assistance Commission awarded its Clearinghouse Award to the Clay County Supervisor of Elections Office for the department’s Election Expo held earlier this year.
During the office’s February Election Expo event, around 150 people learned about voter registration, vote-by-mail, how voting machines are tested and other election procedures.
While talking about vote-by-mail ballots during the February expo, Chambless highlighted the signature recognition classes his staff takes to learn how to validate signatures on vote-by-mail ballots.
“There is a science to recognizing the start, the end lean, the trail, how signatures are done,” he said. “We employ that method to forensically note the similarities, and then again, we have multiple staff members that are doing it with vote-by-mail (to) maintain the privacy and security of the process.”
The supervisor also emphasized that election results from outlying precincts are transmitted to the elections office over a closed network operated by Verizon that is not connected to the internet.
“This is a network that does not touch the internet, doesn’t utilize the internet,” he said.
The “Clearie” Awards, are presented annually across the U.S. for best practices in election administration by the commission.
In other news from the Clay County Supervisor of Elections Office:
Pennsylvania error unlikely in Florida
Chambless said a printing error that delayed the counting of around 14,000 mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania during May is unlikely to happen in Florida.
In a news release, the Clay elections chief did not identify the jurisdiction in which the error occurred, but Lancaster County News in Pennsylvania reported that county commissioners in that jurisdiction announced the problem and said it would take a few days to correct and scan the ballots.
Chambless wrote that one of the biggest differences in how mail-in ballots are handled in Florida as opposed to Pennsylvania, is that Florida Law allows ballots to be processed before Election Day, whereas Pennsylvania law does not.
“Any anomalies or errors can be identified far in advance of Election Day and gives us plenty of time to make corrections and alert voters of any problems,” he wrote.
