Lee County Volunteers encourage voter registration.

TUPELO & SALTILLO, Miss (WCBI)- In Lee County volunteers fanned out around the area to encourage and assist people in registering to vote.

They gathered at the Link Center in Tupelo. Volunteers put signs on their cars, encouraging their fellow citizens to register in time to vote in the August primaries in Mississippi. Teresa Roberts was the event coordinator.

“It’s important because people you know when they say I like this candidate. I don’t like this candidate but if you don’t vote, then don’t complain,” said Roberts.

And Roberts says this weekend’s event was completely non-partisan.

“We’re just going out and knocking on doors. We don’t know whose door we’re going to knock on, but we’re trying to get people registered to vote as well,” said Roberts

Donna Wardlaw was part of the team that went to Saltillo to knock on doors. She says people really need to care about the 2019 off-year elections.

“This is one of my personal rants. There’s so much focus on the national and federal level. And I understand that. I appreciate that. We’ve got a very important state election, bunch of state elections going on. This is where we live. We need to get these people excited and get out and vote for their local and county people where we live,” said Wardlaw.

And the teams were well versed on how to get people registered on site.

“We have guidelines. We have a sheet with us. And we have all the reasons listed why a person cannot vote. So if they say I cannot vote. We ask them why you can’t vote? And then we’ll go down the list and explain to them and say have you did this? If they said no I’ve not done any of those things, then they can register because some people are confused as to why they cannot vote,” said Roberts.

And Wardlaw says they have a list of what they call disenfranchising felonies.

“Those are the felonies that make people not eligible. Interestingly enough, the sale of drugs is not disenfranchising. However, bigamy is. So if John Doe sells some drugs to an undercover agent as long as he wasn’t married to two people the same time, he’s probably going to be able to vote,” said Wardlaw.

And if teams register people they suspect are ineligible, they pass the voter registration info on to the Circuit Clerk to make that call.

The Mississippi primaries will be held on August 6th with primary runoffs August 27th.

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