CANDIDATE Q&A: Supervisor of Elections, Kimble Medley (R)

Palm Coast Observer
News

Kimble Medley
AGE: 52
FAMILY: Married, three children, three grandchildren
QUIRKY FACT: Has 127 pairs of shoes and counting
BIO: Kimble Medley is a Florida native and former Deputy Supervisor of Elections and Deputy Clerk for Flagler County. She also served as a Deputy Clerk in the Probate Division for Collier County. She owned an insurance consulting business and was a senior life and health insurance underwriter. This work experience combines for more than thirty years in industries where reading the Florida Statutes was required. Medley recently acquired her Associate’s Degree from Daytona State College and was named to the college’s Hall of Fame and is a new member of the 2012 Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges. She is presently pursuing her Bachelor’s in Supervision and Management.

This office is invisible to most voters. How does the supervisor impact the average resident?.
Well if the supervisor stays invisible, you’re not going to see the impact to the average resident and I think it’s important for the supervisor to become visible and make the office more visible and not with some of the recent headlines that we’ve seen. You do that by increasing your voter registration drives. ... I can’t remember the last advertised voter registration drive here in Flagler County. ...

And so now you have all the recent polling and precinct changes. That’s going to impact voters. You kind of got a preview of that with the city of Palm Coast elections. Yes, it was a city election, and yes the city determined how they were going to conduct their election, and that’s perfectly fine. But when you have a city election and you’re normally expecting 20-plus polling locations to be open and you bring it down to six, even with the convenience of being able to go to any one of those locations, people are still going to be confused. ...

It needs to be a very, very simple process. And I think a lot of changes or the lack of being visible impacts that. The supervisor needs to be out there speaking when changes come across, when laws change. ...

My generation knows how to vote. It was engrained in our head from the time we were sitting at the dining room table with our parents. And now we have a generation coming behind me, and I speak as a mother of three, two of whom are of voting age — they don’t trust the system. And they don’t think their voice or their vote matters. ...

We need to think outside the box. ... We have a generation that is joined at the hips with their smartphones. So why can’t we use some of that technology? ...

If you were notified of a problem with the registration of a candidate, how would you respond?
My first course is I’m going to the statutes. ... If it’s not clear in the statutes ... I’m going to pick the phone up and call the state. ... And based on what the advisory opinion says, that’s how I would proceed.

If elected, would you expand, condense or leave the number of precincts the same?
For right now, we need to leave things as they are to avoid any more voter confusion. ... Are these changes going to work? What savings are we going to realize? Do the changes that were proposed, and now passed and approved, do they make sense? And I think that gives the voters a chance to voice their opinion, and I would welcome that. ...

What I would be more concerned with is the staffing. Are we going to need more at some locations and fewer poll workers at others? And if so, what are we looking at as far as cost, savings ...

Is early voting worth the time and money for the county?
In this day and age when you have both parents working or there’s a work schedule and maybe someone doesn’t get home until later, maybe they have to get up early and aren’t able to make it to their polling location on election day — I think in that sense, yes, it’s worth it. ...

I think the eight days before an election is an adequate time frame.

If elected, what changes would you make to the Flagler County elections office?
I want to restore a level of leadership and professionalism to that office deserving of Flagler County and its voters. And I don’t say that to be trite or cute or sound political. We get a lot of people moving in state from different locations. Maybe they’re moving from South Florida but they’re coming here to Flagler County. And there’s enough things to worry about when you’re moving. From the moment they enter that door, I want folks to feel that they can come in, ask any question, and it’s going to be answered in a courteous manner. ...

My position is quite simple: I don’t care what your party affiliation is. I don’t care if you’re a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, Tea Party, Green Party, pick a party, I don’t care. My question is quite simple: do you want to vote, and if so, what can the office do to help you? ...

The supervisor of elections, in one sense, needs to be an invisible entity, if you will, working behind the scenes. ... At other times, you need to be visible but in a way that focuses on the voters. Not some of the headlines that we’ve seen recently. ...

Not only am I going to learn the current job, which I’m in the process of doing, reading Florida statutes and reading different materials. Not only do I want to know that job inside out, I want to be able to think outside the box. ...