Supervisor of elections in Clay County would like to see changes to improve voting process

Clay County Supervisor of Elections Chris Chambless has a couple issues he would like to see addressed after recently attending a conference following the midterm elections.

He says the overall feeling at the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections conference was that the midterms went over relatively well in Florida. But he personally thinks voter privacy is something that people in the state are are worried about.

"I heard from a number of voters that just have this expectation of privacy, especially for their cell phone number," Chambless says.

He says his office got a lot of calls from people wondering if that's where many political texts were coming from.

Chambless says he thinks there should be some type of disclaimer attached to those texts that explains who the message is coming from, and if possible, they should have an opt-in or opt-out agreement so people can get off text message lists if they want to.

"Text messaging and solicitation has become a misuse," Chambless says.

The other thing he would like to see happen in Florida is for the state to join the Electronic Registration Information Center or ERIC.

ERIC is a system that's geared toward making it easier for states to improve the accuracy of voter rolls, and at the same time increasing access to voter registration for anyone eligible to vote.

"The cost of that is between $59,000 and $65,000 a year, for the dues," Chambless says. "However, keep in mind that those dues decrease as more states join ERIC."

As of July, there were 25 states participating in the program, according to the ERIC website.

Chambless says he would like to see Florida on that growing list. The program was formed in in 2012.