In a January 2023 ceremony Collier County Supervisor of Elections Jennifer Edwards leads staff and volunteers in an oath to uphold the US and state constitutions. (Photo: Collier County Supervisor of Elections (CCSE) office)
Feb. 21, 2023 by David Silverberg
The 2024 election will be dominated by the race for president—no matter which candidates run. But around the country another, county-level contest may be just as important.
Certainly that will be true in Collier County, Fla., because the outcome of this election could influence all voting—and the local state of democracy—into the indefinite future.
The position is Supervisor of Elections. In Collier County the post is currently held by Jennifer Edwards, who has served in the position since 2000.
Edwards is up for re-election in 2024. However, she told The Paradise Progressive she hasn’t decided whether to run for another term.
“I’ll decide in a few months,” she said.
Collier County Supervisor of Elections Jennifer Edwards holds the laws of Florida governing election procedures and requirements. (Photo: Author)
Meanwhile, Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the outspokenly conservative, Trumpist farmer and grocer who is a significant local political player, has targeted the Supervisor of Elections position.
“I will be challenging the Superintendent of Elections to clean up and do away with computer calculations for voting,” he told The Paradise Progressive in an interview on Dec. 14. “We should have hand counts. In Europe they don’t take three weeks,” to reach a conclusion, he noted, referring to other elections around the United States that took long times to tabulate.
As for Edwards, he said, “I like Jennifer Edwards. I think she’s a little bit naïve and if you put her hand on the Bible, she would swear there is nothing corrupt going on there. I don’t think that’s true.”
The 2024 election is still one year and two months away. However, if the person elected Supervisor cannot be depended upon to accurately, neutrally and effectively count the votes in compliance with law, voters won’t ever again have confidence in the official outcome of any Collier County election, including intraparty elections like primaries.
That situation could get the county in trouble both with state and federal law and be a deadly blow for real democracy.
A legacy of stability
All of the election supervisors who held the office since its creation in 1965 gathered for this 2000 ribbon cutting. From left to right are Mary Morgan, Jennifer Edwards and Edna Cribb Santa. (Photo: CCSE)
In Collier County the position of Supervisor is a partisan, elected position with a term of four years. To date, county election supervisors have served long, non-controversial terms and there have only been three of them.
Collier County was created as a separate governing entity in 1923. It was served by a Supervisor of Registration of Electors before the office was changed to Supervisor of Elections in 1965. After serving four years as registrar, Edna Cribb Santa became the first Supervisor in 1965 and held the post for 16 years until 1981. She was followed by Mary Morgan, who served 19 years until 2000.
Edwards, a Republican, was appointed to the position to oversee the general election of 2000. She won election in her own right and has held the post ever since and was most recently re-elected in 2020
A native of Kentucky, she received all her education including her bachelor and master degrees there. She moved to Collier County with her husband in 1984.
She entered county government in 1987 after a stint as a school teacher and served as a budget analyst, assistant to the county manager and director of human resources, and took over as Election Supervisor when Mary Morgan chose to step down.
She did this just in time to oversee Collier County’s part in the hugely controversial 2000 presidential election, which hinged on hanging chads, butterfly ballots and a nail-biting statewide recount, which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.
“I got to be part of the improvements over the years because the Florida legislature immediately started making improvements and making changes to help the voters in Florida,” she recalled of the experience.
Undismayed—and unsullied—Edwards continued on as Supervisor, expanding her expertise and won honors and additional credentials in election management. These included a state certification, a Master Florida Certified Elections Professional designation from the Florida Supervisors of Elections and certification as an Elections Registration Administrator from the Election Center, also known as the National Association of Election Officials. She received a Chancellor’s Certificate in Public Administration from the International Association of Government Officials.
She also stood out among her fellow state election supervisors, rising through the ranks of the state’s professional association, the Florida Supervisors of Elections, serving successively as the organization’s treasurer, secretary and president.
In addition she has been active in a wide variety of county civic and social groups.
During her terms in office there have never been any scandals, criminal investigations, or allegations of wrongdoing in Collier County elections. There were recounts of close elections but these were handled as part of the normal election process.
Also under Edwards’ tenure, Collier County continuously updated its technology to count the votes cast on paper ballots, in compliance with state law. Today it has rigorous, multilayered safeguards at all levels against errors, miscounts, tampering or fraud. It is equally equipped to process both in-person and mail-in ballots under strenuous security measures. It actively trains its election workers and volunteers in the latest procedures, regulations and technology. After every election a precinct is selected at random for an in-depth audit to evaluate the integrity of the vote.
In keeping with state law, Collier County has faithfully complied with Florida requirements for timely results reporting. That law (Title IX, Chapter 102.072) states that “Beginning at 7 p.m. on election day, the supervisor must, at least once every hour while actively counting, post on his or her website the number of vote-by-mail ballots that have been received and the number of vote-by-mail ballots that remain uncounted.” The county has always met that requirement.
Justin Vacca, Collier County vote by mail coordinator, operates the office’s sorting machine that separates mail-in ballots from other mail and organizes them for opening and tabulation. (Video: Author)
To date, Collier County voters have been able to have confidence in clean, accurately counted elections tabulated in a lawful and transparent manner, with results posted immediately and in real time.
Indeed, in the last election, all of Florida’s results were reported as soon as the polls closed and were widely accepted without argument.
“People are actually looking at Florida and asking the question, why can't these states be more like Florida?” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in the immediate wake of the 2022 midterm election. “The way Florida did it, I think, inspires confidence. I think that’s how elections should be run. We’re now being looked at as the state that did it right, and the state that these other states should emulate.”
In a locked and secured storage facility, election services coordinators William Kocses and Jake Pirosseno join Supervisor Jennifer Edwards in examining ballot machines organized according to precinct. (Photo: Author)
A faith in disbelief
For all that, there remains an ingrained, unshakable disbelief in the voting process among some people, particularly 2020 election-denying subscribers to the Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.
In Southwest Florida the most outspoken of these is Alfie Oakes. After the 2020 election, which Trump won in Florida by 51 percent and which all parties accepted, Oakes joined a late wave of MAGA election skepticism.
In September 2021 he argued on Facebook that DeSantis had to audit the 2020 election in Florida: “in fact if he does NOT dig into this election fraud he will most certainly lose to Charlie Christ or even worse Nikki Fried,” Oakes warned. He stated that he had spent “hundreds of hours” on Florida election fraud and found possibly 900,000 stolen votes, penetration of all 67 Florida counties and Chinese hacking of Florida computer systems.
On the Alex Jones InfoWars show, Oakes offered DeSantis a $100,000 campaign contribution if he would sit down in person for two hours and listen to Oakes and his friends try to convince him to reopen the election count—this ten months after the election concluded. A DeSantis aide politely responded but declined.
In a more recent case of election denial, on Dec. 20, 2022, Mike Lindell, chief executive officer and owner of My Pillow, alleged a false Florida result in the midterm election, the outcome of which even Democrats don’t dispute.
In that election DeSantis won his race for governor by 59.4 percent, a truly decisive victory and Republicans swept virtually every office they contested.
Nonetheless, on his own show, Lindell said, “I don’t believe it,” referring to DeSantis’s major win in Miami-Dade County (which Lindell kept calling Dade County). “So it’s just going to show everybody — just like we always tell you about Democrats where they stole their elections … I’m going to find out if Dade County — what happened there.”
Lindell’s disbelief would seem to be in the service of former President Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy but it also shows both the stubborn persistence of election skepticism and its use for short-term political gain. (Since then, nothing further has been heard regarding Lindell’s allegations.)
Looking ahead to the 2024 election in Collier County, Oakes similarly remains convinced of improprieties and wants to stop electronic tabulation as a matter of principle.
“I’m not saying there isn’t a system that lends itself to corruption,” he told The Paradise Progressive. “We need to take the most strict measures. [Computerized counting] lends itself to massive fraud.”
Nor is Oakes convinced by Collier County’s otherwise clean record in this regard. “If I left the door to Seed to Table open for two years and nothing was stolen that still wouldn’t mean it was safe,” he said. “Overwhelmingly there’s a large population in our country who believe elections are compromised.”
Even the banking system has flaws, he noted. “So we have to come up with something we can have confidence in.”
People might dismiss these kinds of allegations, except that Oakes has his own record of electoral success behind him. In the last election, using his Citizens Awake Now Political Action Committee, all of his endorsed candidates won positions on the Collier County Board of Commissioners and the School Board, allowing them to dominate both bodies.
Edwards is unworried. “If somebody thinks they can come in here and do whatever they want to do, they can’t do it. There are Florida election laws that have been passed over the years and I take an oath and my staff takes an oath every year to uphold the US Constitution and the Florida Constitution. It’s very important for us.”
As for changing the election process, she pointed out that there’s an open and transparent procedure to adapt to new conditions. Each county is asked to submit suggestions for legislative changes. The state election supervisors association weighs in on electoral changes and actively lobbies the legislature.
After the experience of the contested 2000 presidential election, she said, “We follow Florida election law. We will continue to do that and I encourage folks to talk to their state legislators if they want elections conducted differently because they’ll have to get the law changed in Florida by the state legislature in order for their changes to become effective.”
As for the use of technology, “I think the advances we’ve made in technology goes without saying,” she argued. “I have worked in elections since punch cards and I’m seeing the improvements. And there are cross checks of everything we do and we do conduct an audit after every election and we never had a difference in results. The controls we have in place in my view confirms the accuracy of the equipment.”
Edwards also believes she has solid backing among Collier County Republicans, should she decide to run again.
This is confirmed by Diane Van Parys, president of Republican Women of SW Florida Federated, a First Vice President of the Florida Federation of Republican Women and a member of the Florida Fair Elections Coalition, an election reform organization. She has extensive experience in election monitoring and observance, not just in Florida but also in her previous residence in Georgia. There she says she observed numerous irregularities and questionable practices in large part due to completely computerized balloting, none of which have been present in Collier County where paper ballots are used.
When it comes to Edwards’ election management, “You can’t trip her up in terms of how she does things,” Van Parys said. “She has operated totally with integrity and in a non-partisan way. There are free and fair elections in Collier County. I can tell you that we have the best practices in the state for elections.”
While it is not certain that Edwards herself will be on the ballot in 2024, Melissa Blazier, Collier County’s chief deputy supervisor of elections, has expressed an interest in filling the role. Blazier has worked in the Supervisor’s office for 17 years and is both a Master Florida Certified Elections Professional and a Certified Elections/Registration Administrator.
Melissa Blazier (Photo: CCSE)
National push—and pushback
Collier County and Florida are just microcosmic instances of a national movement of election denial, which is being very deliberately stoked and incited.
Ever since President Donald Trump baselessly denied the results of the 2020 election, his MAGA followers have called into question the entire election process. Despite strenuous efforts by Trump and his lawyers, no court challenge, audit or recount turned up the supposedly massive fraud that he alleged. Even the hosts and commentators of Fox News, which did much to spread his accusations, didn’t believe them, as their private communications have revealed.
Nonetheless, based on the belief of widespread fraud and disbelief in the process as it’s currently constituted, MAGAs have been working to alter the process in their favor.
Legislatively, this has taken the form of Republican-dominated state legislatures and governors steadily restricting voting access and seeking to suppress the franchise to as great a degree as possible.
At the grassroots, election workers and volunteers have been physically threatened and verbally assaulted. Completely unfounded conspiracy theories and fabricated rumors have been spread about the election process, although this was less prevalent in 2022 than in 2020.
While not all supervisors are elected, as the country prepares for the 2024 election, there is a new national MAGA push to take over elected supervisor positions. The challenge is likely to be mounted at the primary level, especially among Republicans.
“The concerns about being primaried [are] absolutely on the mind of very dedicated and very middle-of-the-road, nonpartisan-functioning” election officials in Florida, said Mark Earley, the election supervisor in Leon County, Fla., and current president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections. He was quoted in a Feb. 1 Politico article, “Election officials ready themselves for the next wave of Trump followers,” which provides a national perspective on the effort.
Nationally, one of the most strenuous struggles is expected to take place in Maricopa County, Ariz., which was the focus of intense controversy in 2020 when Joe Biden narrowly won the county and state. Since then battles have embroiled its county commissioners and election officials. But similar battles are expected in places such as Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategic advisor, who has advocated a “village-by-village” approach to taking political power, has told listeners of his “War Room” podcast that Democrats can only win elections if they steal them and argued that the only way to prevent that is “by taking over the election apparatus.”
But the election deniers don’t have a clear field; there is new resistance to the election denial cohort.
State election officials, legislators, civic groups and private citizens are pushing back against election-denying charges and allegations. Election procedures and security measures have been strengthened. Judges are showing less tolerance for baseless lawsuits and unfounded election challenges. The media—mainstream and otherwise—have become far more skeptical of election-denial disinformation and delusional charges.
It also appears that the vast majority of the American public simply don’t believe the accusations. The fact that election-denying candidates did poorly in the 2022 midterms is evidence of that.
Polling data backs this up: “On the whole, it appears that a majority of Americans do believe in the integrity of the nation’s elections: An Oct. 3-20 [2022] poll conducted by Gallup showed that 63 percent of U.S. adults were at least somewhat confident ballots would be ‘accurately cast and counted’ in this year’s midterms,” wrote Zoha Qamar on the website FiveThirtyEight.com.
Another poll by Bright Line Watch, an academic group studying American democracy, found that confidence in the 2022 election results increased, even among skeptical Republicans.
So the news is not entirely threatening for democracy’s future. Normality and constitutionality seem to be reasserting themselves.
That applies in Collier County as well, whether Edwards runs again or not.
Voters should take note as the 2024 election season proceeds: as big and brassy and boisterous as a presidential election is, sometimes those quiet, overlooked down-ballot races are extremely important.
All elections are consequential but some are more consequential than others. And it is just possible that election of the Supervisor of Elections may be the most consequential of all.
Liberty lives in light
© 2023 by David Silverberg