Safety of BOE as polling place is questioned

By Stephanie Johns
Staff Writer

The Morgan County Board of Elections and Registration discussed the recent election season during their November meeting.
Chairperson George Holt said that the election went smoothly and credited early voting, which stands at nearly 53 percent.
“That helped us get out in record time,” he said.
Board member John Milliken credited the poll managers.
“They did a fantastic job in wrapping up and getting results to us,” he said.
Elections Supervisor Bobby Howington said they have not had a supplemental list in five years and thanked Deputy Registrar Sue DoorenBos for her work.
“Sue does a good job of ensuring we’re on the right side of that date stamp,” he said.
Milliken gave DoorenBos “tremendous credit” for not having a supplemental list as well.
DoorenBos later explained that the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University pulls a list of voters from the Secretary of State’s Voter Registration System prior to each election. Once that list is created each county is given one or more flash cards with their list of registered voters on it. Changes to the list necessitate a supplemental list.
In all, they had 4,463 in-office voters, 331 mail/absentee voters, 4,276 poll voters, and five provisional voters for a total of 9,075 voters. That puts the county at a 74 percent turnout, down from 78.35 percent four years ago.
Holt suggested that Howington present precinct data to the board at their December meeting.
Board member David Moore said that he favors consolidating some of the precincts and said he considers voting at the Morgan County Board of Education office to be “very dangerous.”
“Right next door you’ve got the primary school and you’ve got hundreds of voters going in and out of the parking lot at the same time you’ve got hundreds of little kids getting out of mommy’s or daddy’s car to go in the school,” he said. “To me, it’s just crazy.”
He added that it is a very busy time of day early in the morning.
“We have no business having a 100 voters show up there when kids are jumping out of cars and running into class,” he said. “That’s just crazy to have that at that location.”
Howington then told board members about a new voter registration system coming online.
“It does everything but wash the dishes,” he said, adding that it has a dashboard that tells users what they should be doing.
He said that training is mandated for all of the 159 counties in Georgia by April 1. There will be no cost to attendees and they will receive mileage reimbursement.
The board voted to have Howington and DoorenBos as well as Milliken attend the week-long training in Athens this December.
The office will be closed the week of Dec. 3 through 7 because of the training requirement.

Printed in the November 22, 2012 edition