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Election Chief Hopefuls Want Your Vote

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By LAURA KINSLER lkinsler@tampatrib.com

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 12, 2008

DADE CITY - For the first time in decades, Pasco County voters will elect someone other than Kurt Browning as their supervisor of elections.

Browning, long considered one of the finest election chiefs in the state, was tapped by Gov. Charlie Crist in 2007 as Florida Secretary of State. Crist appointed Brian Corley, an administrator for Pasco Sheriff Bob White, to replace Browning.

Corley, 38, had no experience overseeing elections, but he was a politically connected Republican with a master's degree in public administration. He also has an ebullient personality and a passion for the job.

Corley said he didn't immediately decide to run for election. He wanted to wait until he had run an election to make sure the job was "a good fit."

"I thought it would be presumptuous to file for election when I'd only been on the job for a few months," he said. "I fell in love with the nobility of what we do here."

In less than two years, he has run four elections and implemented the new optical scan voting system.

"My goal is simple: to be the next Kurt Browning," Corley said. "I'm not saying I want to be secretary of state. I mean I want to be known as someone who is professional, impartial and known for excellence."

Corley is being challenged by Pat Carroll, a lawyer who changed her party affiliation to run as a Democrat. Carroll, 50, attended law school after spending years as a child abuse investigator and supervising the Juvenile Justice Center in Dade City. Currently, the Wesley Chapel resident's career is focused on probate cases and trusts.

"This is a job I've wanted since I was 19, when I ran for city council up in Attleboro Mass.," she said. "The supervisor of elections there was really helpful to me."

Carroll said she wasn't raised in an especially political household. She decided to run for city council while still in junior college because she didn't like how she was treated when she spoke up at her local council meeting.

"The councilwoman was extremely rude to me," she said. "I couldn't believe they chastised a 19-year-old who was trying to participate in the political process."

She lost the first election but ran again and won when she was 23. Carroll moved to Pasco County in 1993 to take a job as a child abuse investigator in Dade City.

Carroll said Corley's short term in office has been less than stellar. She pointed to problems with the July primary election, when 18 of the county's 154 precincts couldn't transmit voting results electronically. Poll workers had to download the vote counts onto portable flash drives and bring them to the nearest elections office.

In one of the precincts, the poll workers couldn't find the portable drive with the results on it. Those results weren't posted until 11:03 p.m.

"You have to have a procedure in place that is always followed," Carroll said. "They have to be treated like evidence, where you keep the chain of custody," she said. "Otherwise you don't know what could have happened to the data on that thumb drive during that two-hour period."

As voting equipment gets more sophisticated, elections supervisors have to be vigilant to prevent voter fraud. "We need to lose the naivete we had about the ability of people to tamper with an election," Carroll said.

Corley knows the last election didn't go smoothly. He said he slept on the couch in his office that night. But he said voters should remember that the elections office is using its third voting system in less than eight years.

"There's no perfect voting system," he said. "We have to have voter confidence. We have to shake the image of 2000. It was a complete debacle."

Corley said he's accomplished quite a bit during his short time in office. He has cut the office's budget and returned $200,000 to the taxpayers. He also came up with the idea to keep the privacy stands that came with the county's touch-free voting machines so they could be used with the new optical scan system. The idea saved the county $252,000, he said.

In addition, Corley brings a perfect voting record - something he said is critical because the supervisor often speaks publicly about the importance of voting.

"There are some things you have to be able to speak to," he said. "It goes to credibility. Pat's voting record is lackluster, at best. I think it's a key issue. How can you go into schools and tell kids how important it is to vote when you don't vote?"

Carroll has voted in every presidential election, but she has missed a few primaries and municipal votes over the years.

"It's not a qualification of the job to have a perfect voting record," she said. "I've been voting for 30 years. I'm a very solid voter, and for him to attack me on that is absurd. Things happen in real life. Sometimes you can't make it to the polls. It's a nonissue. It doesn't mean I'm not patriotic."

The supervisor of elections oversees a 25-member staff in four offices across the county. The $117,000 salary is set by the Florida Legislature.

BRIAN CORLEY

Age: 38

Education: University of South Florida, bachelor's in political science and master's in public administration

Family: Married with two children

Professional experience: Supervisor of elections (2007- present); personnel director for Pasco County Sheriff's Office (2000-2007); human resources specialist for Pasco County Clerk of Circuit Court (1992-2000)

Political experience: Appointed in January 2007 by Gov. Crist

Web site: www.electBrian Corley.com
PAT CARROLL
Age: 50

Education: Providence College, bachelor's degree in psychology; University of Florida, law degree

Family: Single

Professional experience: Lawyer, sole practitioner (2001-present); assistant state attorney in Dade City (1999-2001); supervisor of Juvenile Justice Center, child abuse investigator
Political experience: Attleboro, Mass. City Council (1981-83)

Web site: www.pascowants PatCarroll.com

Reporter Laura Kinsler can be reached at (813) 865-4844.

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