Election commissioners work hard ahead of primary election

LOUISVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Setting up everything for an election can be a lot of work.

For voters, it’s just a few minutes on one day. For election commissioners and poll workers, it’s weeks of preparation to make sure it works out that way.

With taking absentee ballots, organizing the precincts, and training poll workers the commissioners have been busy.

Shawn Butts has been working hard to get everything ready for tomorrow’s election. She and her team have done all they can to help the process run smoothly.

“We have to gather all the materials together that we are going to need,” said Butts. “Poll books, inactive lists, update our voter’s rolls, constantly, that happens all year-long. Make sure all our polls are ready and cleaned up and adaptable to all the people coming in.”

Winston County will have around 80 poll workers on duty. And Butts has been splitting her time between getting precincts and the new workers ready.

“A lot of our time is spent training the election workers for the different polls, and we have been working for probably the last month getting that all together. It’s a long process,” said Butts.

The process of becoming a poll worker is a tough one. Workers have to go through training on how to properly handle each precinct.

“It’s pretty rigorous. It’s set up by the Secretary of State’s office,” said Butts. “We train them on handling the public, greeting people, remembering that the customer is always right, and we have to direct them to their voting precinct if they happen to be in the wrong precinct. We are also big on bringing your ID to vote.”

Butts says they haven’t had many people vote absentee. She hopes that this means more people will turn out to the polls.

“We’re hoping that we have a good turn out here in Winston County,” said Butts.

Polls open Tuesday at 7 am and will close at 7 pm.

Categories: Featured, Local News

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *