(This is the first in a series of how Clay County conducts elections. There are many misconceptions about the process, especially following the 2000 presidential election when Al Gore claimed some of his votes weren’t accepted because of “hanging chads on paper ballots.” A recount showed George Bush won the state’s 25 Electoral College by a margin of only 537 votes.)

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – As the county’s Supervisor of Elections, Chris Chambless has heard every concern and accusation about the integrity of the voting process:

Dead people can vote.

Ballots can be stuffed.

Outside sources can hack voting machines.

His response is always the same: “We had an elections expo where we invited members of the community, as well as the press, to come and take a look behind the curtain because there’s a lot of individuals that are involved in politics but don’t necessarily know how the elections are conducted. So, we walked through the process from the beginning to the end, from requesting a vote or registering to vote, requesting to vote by mail ballot, all the way through that process to voting. We even set up a polling location inside the training center and talked about tabulating the vote.”

Moreover, Chambless said anyone with questions can stop at the office at 500 North Orange Ave. in Orange Park to get answers.

“If you don’t have faith in the system, are you going to participate? Then, what happens is you become the virus that infects other people from not participating. We have too many people sitting on the sidelines. We need you to get some skin in the game. We’re here if anyone wants to see how we do it,” he said.

The Presidential Preference Primary election is on March 19, followed by the Municipal Super Tuesday Election on April 9 for local candidates.

Since Florida is a closed primary state, Chambless wanted every registered voter to know they can only cast ballots for candidates in the voter’s registered party. That means Republicans can only vote for Republicans; Democrats can only vote for Democrats.

“We are going to face a lot of individuals who aren’t registered Republicans, and it hasn’t occurred to them that they won’t be able to vote in the (Presidential Preference Primary),” Chambless said.

Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has seen a mass migration of people moving to new states, and no state is gaining more newcomers than Florida. Many from Democrat-leaning states don’t know they can’t jump parties during primaries, such as Municipal Super Tuesday and the Primaries on Aug. 20.

A voter can change their political affiliation at least 29 days ahead of election days – Feb. 20 for the PPP, March 11 for the MST and July 22 for the primaries.

Anyone can switch back ahead of the general election before Oct.7, although voters can cast ballots for any candidate, regardless of party, during the General Election on Nov. 5.

Two of the most common pieces of misinformation Chambless hears are dead people casting ballots, and election machines can be hacked from outside sources.

Both are completely false, Chambless said.

“Of course, the first thing we hear is dead people voting,” he said. “There is a lot of maintenance in a 90-day period, but we also do it in real-time.”

The Florida Department of Health provides names from death certificates weekly. Chambless said his office also gets notifications from family members, clerks of courts and Social Security.

“Why is Social Security a good resource? They want to quit paying you, OK? As soon as they can quit paying you, they want to,” Chambless said.

Chambless said voting machines can’t be hacked because they aren’t connected to the internet.

“Our systems are locked and sealed,” he said. “We have a chain of custody. We have a two-person control. We have cameras out of the wazoo. Even if you get into the tab room, where only three people in the organization have access to that tab room, you would have to have the knowledge to do that.

“Then we have at least three last fail-safes – logic and accuracy tests randomly created in the test deck. If you don’t know what precinct, test or race is being tested, how can you enter, let’s say, a Trojan horse to wherever Candidate A gets a vote and Candidate B gets three votes and Candidate C loses votes? If you didn’t know what was being tested, you would not be able to write such a script to be able to do that.”

Although Florida only requires selected races and precincts to be verified, Chambless said every vote from every race is confirmed.

The way that we elect people is a democracy, and a democracy can stagnate. We got to figure out a way to make sure it doesn’t happen,” he said.

“Don’t take my word for it. You know, come here and invest yourself into the process.”