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Board of registrars say help will be welcomed Recently Ed Packard of the Secretary of State's office came to Chatom at the request of Probate Judge Charles Singleton to look into problems within the Washington County Registrars Office. Singleton has been very vocal about the problems encountered at several polling places back in February because the registrars office has been unable to come up with a correct comprehensive voting list for the county. The judge has also been apprehensive about having a completed corrected voters' list for the upcoming June primary. Voncile Allen and Napoleon Reed of the registrars office said Packard told them, "I am not here to step on toes or call names. I am here to help." He brought them 900 pages of voter names downloaded from the Secretary of State's office which show "irregular" addresses. These must be re-entered into the computer by April 30 for the probate office to generate accurate ballots for the June Primary. Both Allen and Reed explained that they are more than willing to accept any help that is forthcoming for this monumental task. In addition to the over-lapping commission- school board districts, Reed and Allen explained that after they put a person's name, street number, street name, town and zip code into the computer; they then often have to consult three map books to made a decision about the voter's district. Part of the problem comes in because in Washington County Commission District lines and School Board District lines are drawn differently. Ex: a voter may vote in Commission District 3 and in School Board District 4. Then there may be another ballot style for only those who are voting on commissioner this time, etc. The assigning of the correct district to each of Washington County's 13,000 registered voters is critical; as the computer programmed to assign the correct ballot style to each voter by district. It is common in Washington County for a single polling place to have two ballot styles. Reed said that some places have three ballot styles. Judge Singleton has recommended to the county commission that the county go to 20 voting centers as opposed to 35 "boxes." There may be voters assigned to individual centers from two, and in more rare cases three districts. At one time, the poll workers had to ask the voter where he lived and then manually consult a wall map to decide which ballot to hand him. With the advent of the computerized system, the computer will assign the ballot style; but only if the data is input accurately.
Allen said that staff from the probate office will soon begin working after regular hours in the registrars office in an effort to get the voter list ready for the June Primary.
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