Monticello Live

The Drew County Election Commission met Friday, and discussed the recommendation of moving 3 polling places, due to low voter turn out, into nearby precincts.

Jerome (a recent election had 17 voters)  would  begin voting at the Collins precinct (60 votes), in 2018.

Winchester (36 votes) and Tillar (40 votes) would be merged into the Selma polling site (125 votes).

Any voters unable to vote at the new polling sites would be able to vote absentee or use early voting at the courthouse.

The main reasons for needing to close the three polling places are:

1. Maintaining qualified/trained poll workers.   Many  of the county’s long-time poll workers are retiring, and few residents are interested in taking their places, working on election day in rural Drew County.
2. Poll workers are required to live in the precinct where they work the polls.  Exceptions to this state mandate require a lot of advance effort.
3.  The majority of Drew County’s 40 electronic voting machines are approximately 10 years old, and will soon need to be replaced. At $4,500 each, eliminating 10-12 machines will have a major cost savings.

Sonja Ryburn of the election commission presented their proposal to the county quorum at their regular monthly meeting, Monday night.

The group seem to understand the situation, but wanted to hold a put hearing public meeting for residents in the area to share their thoughts, in hopes of finding another solution to the problem.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2017 at 12:43 am and is filed under County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.