PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — Pinellas County's new supervisor of elections is making it her mission to make voter participation in this year's elections easier than ever, even in the midst of a pandemic.

Gov. Ron DeSantis named Julie Marcus to succeed Deborah Clark as Pinellas County's supervisor of elections, filling the vacancy left behind by Deborah Clark. Clark announced in February she was stepping down after leading the county's elections office for 20 years.

Marcus has served in the Pinellas SOE’s office for the past 17 years, and has been the Chief Deputy with the agency since 2012.  A registered Republican, Marcus was recommended by Clark to succeed her in the resignation letter she sent to DeSantis in February, and likely will endorse her in the upcoming election.

Ambitious plans

Marcus said that Pinellas County – which has always had a robust vote-by-mail effort – will now enhance efforts to make it easier than ever for Pinellas voters to participate in the electoral process while undergoing a pandemic.

That includes mailing out a request for a vote-by-mail ballot to all registered voters in the county who currently have not made such a request, a proposal that a few other supervisors of elections around the state have indicated that they will do.

Marcus also said that for the first time ever for Pinellas County, the supervisor of elections office will pay for returned postage for those who vote-by-mail. Craig Latimer, the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections and President of the Florida Supervisor of Elections, said last week that only nine counties in the state currently pay for return postage on vote-by-mail ballots, but that more than a dozen others were planning on doing so this year.

Recent lawsuits filed against the state have also called for all 67 supervisors of election around the state to pay for return postage on vote-by-mail ballots.

And Marcus announced that for vote-by-mail voters who have concerns about dropping off their ballot in the mail, her office will increase the number of drop-off locations around the county where voters can drop off those ballots.

The goal, Marcus explained, would be to “make it where every home (resident) in Pinellas County wouldn’t have to go further than three miles to get to a ballot drop-off location,” she said.

Facing competition in the fall

Marcus declined to talk about any plans of running for the seat this year, though she is widely expected to officially announce her candidacy soon.  

The only other Republican to enter the August 18 primary is Audra Bonneau, a St. Petersburg native running for office for the first time. 

“As a candidate who doesn’t have a political background or anything like that, it is a challenge. But I also have to make sure I can raise the money,” said Bonneau, who has raised $1,700 as of the end of April.

Bonneau says that while she doesn’t have any major criticisms to lob at how the office has been handled, that doesn’t mean she couldn’t find things to change if she were actually inside the SOE operations.

That’s not the opinion of a couple of Democrats who have already filed to run for the position.

Attorney Dan Helm has been involved in voter protection efforts in recent elections. He says it’s time for new leadership in the office.

Like many other Pinellas Democrats before him, Helm takes issue with the fact that the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections has historically operated fewer early voting sites than comparably sized counties.  In recent election cycles, there have been only a handful of such voting sites around the county (as opposed to counties like Hillsborough, which has opened as many as 23 sites during elections).

Marcus isn’t likely to change the current system, saying that Pinellas’ turnout rate ranks higher than other counties with significantly more early voting sites.

“Mail ballots have increased voter turn-out,” Marcus says. “I can’t speak to every county. Every jurisdiction is different. They have different considerations, but for Pinellas County, it’s worked. It’s not a theory…our voters embrace this. This is a choice that they’ve made, and so we’re going to consider to support that.”

Helm says that maintaining just a handful of early voting this year with COVID-19 existing is “unacceptable.”

“In a pandemic, when where we are crowding everybody in the same location? It’s irresponsible,” he says. “We’ve got to do better.”

The other two democrats in the race are Mike McGraw and Leonard Schmiege. Neither of them have reported raising any money in the race as of yet.

McGraw, a native of Pittsburg, says he thinks it’s time for new leadership in the Pinellas office, but praises the county’s vote-by-mail efforts.

Schmiege, who ran for a seat on the St. Petersburg City Council in 2009, is critical of how operations have been run with the Supervisor of Elections office under Clark and says, “I sincerely hope that Julie Marcus does not intend to conduct elections in the same way as her predecessor.”