SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – Seminole County has a new supervisor of elections. News 6 sat down with Amy Pennock after just two weeks on the job to hear her plans for the future.
Pennock garnered 53% of the vote and beat Democrat Deborah Poulalion in the general election in November.
Over the last two months, Pennock says she submitted records requests and spoke to community members to prepare for her time in office.
“I wanted to make sure I knew what I needed to know coming in, so I requested a lot of documents so I could be familiar with the staff, with the budget, with what some of the issues are,” Pennock said.
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Before she was elected to this new position, Pennock served on the Seminole County School Board. She was first elected in 2018 and reelected without opposition in 2020. While on the school board, she served as vice chair from 2019 to 2021, and chair from 2021 to 2022. She also has experience as a forensic accountant.
“We’re here for our constituents. We’re not here for the office. We’re not here for the paycheck. We’re here because we got voted in by the constituents,” Pennock said. “We have an obligation to listen to them. We may not like what they say. We may not agree at the end, but we can agree to disagree respectfully. And so I think that’s one of the biggest things is really just being prepared to listen to all the different perspectives and be open about what they have to say.”
Currently, there are 353,729 registered voters in Seminole County. 123,055 are registered as Republicans and 113,630 are registered as Democrat.
Pennock says she has plans to start an advisory panel to ensure that people from different parties and different needs are met.
“Minorities have different challenges, people with disabilities have different challenges, and if we’re not listening to them and incorporating some things that we can do to make our office more service-friendly, we’re not doing justice to our voters,” Pennock said. “That’s one of the biggest things that we’re going to do first is really build that advisory panel and start listening to them, giving us advice on how we can make ourselves better here.”
Pennock defeated incumbent Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Chris Anderson in the Florida Primary election. His time in office was marred by a series of conflicts, particularly with the Seminole County Commission. Public confrontations between Anderson and other officials, coupled with serious accusations, damaged his relationship with some county officials.
Pennock says she plans on rebuilding trust within the office.
“Absolutely. It’s not lost on me, but I think I have a heads up in that my relationships are already there with them,” Pennock said. “We just have to be more transparent with them on issues that we’ve had, how we fix them, how it affects them, how it affects our community, our voters, and I don’t have a problem doing that.”
Within the last two weeks, Pennock says she is already working on making changes. Technology upgrades are one priority.
“I’ve heard from several workers who have had challenges with getting their payroll paid, going even back to the primary, and so we’re really looking at some technology to make sure we’re streamlining payroll, not just for the poll workers but for our staff,” Pennock said.
Pennock says she would also like to upgrade the county’s elections website.
“One of the things that we really would like to put out there is you’ll be able to print your own voter card. So, if you have to use that for residency proof or if you have to use that for some other kind of documentation, that you can be able to print it right there on demand for yourself and you don’t have to wait for us to mail it to you.”
Pennock walked our News 6 team through the supervisor of elections headquarters so we could see how she’s settling in. One of the challenges she’s faced with already is a lack of space. It’s also a problem her predecessors have brought up before.
“We are looking at being very creative with our space to make sure that we are using every bit of it that we can, and if we can use some off-site storage space for stuff that we don’t need to use 100% of the time we’re looking at moving some stuff out of here so we can have a little bit more working space in our warehouse,” Pennock said.
Pennock said she also gave a tour to the Board of County Commissioners staff.
“We’re going to do some upgrades to the facility, and there’s not been some upgrades done for quite some time. We need a little bit more, you know, simple things like outlets,” Pennock said.
Pennock says she also wants to find better ways to welcome the public to be part of the election process. The county currently broadcasts the Elections Canvassing Board live on county television so anyone can watch the process in real time.
“We’re going to work hard to make sure people can participate in that,” Pennock said. “We have heard other counties allow the public to come in and be a participant in logic and accuracy (testing) and maybe that’s something that we’ll look at in the future.”
Pennock says she is ready to take on the challenge, and ready to serve Seminole County in her new role.
“I had a friend reach out to me last week and said, ‘You know, Amy, you’re the third female constitutional officer in history of Seminole County’ and it kind of hit me,” Pennock said. “I have three daughters, and I’ve always said everything that I do I want to make sure that I’m making them proud and being a role model for them. And so, personally I think hearing that I’m the third woman puts me in a role model situation for all the females in the community and our county and our schools and future voters, and I don’t take that lightly.”
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