Sunday, August 09, 2020

Voters In Five Of Oconee County’s 12 Precincts Will Have A Different Polling Place On Nov. 3

***Heavy Turnout Is Expected***

Voters in five of Oconee County’s 12 precincts will be voting in a different location on Nov. 3 than in the past as a result of action taken by the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration last week.

Voters in Farmington and Bishop precincts will vote at Bishop Baptist Church, 1110 Old Bishop Road, rather than at the community centers of the two cities, as has been the case in the past.

Voters in North High Shoals and North Oconee precincts will vote at Grace Fellowship Church, 1120 Malcom Bridge Road, rather that at North High Shoals Town Hall and the North Oconee High School Field House.

Voters in Athens Academy Precinct, who currently vote at the Athens Academy Spartan Center at the school’s campus off U.S. 441, will vote at the Civic Center, 2661 Hog Mountain Road, unless the county can find another location before the November election.

Though the Board has discussed consolidating these precincts, the action taken on Tuesday is stopgap to provide more space for equipment and voters at what is expected to be a heavy turnout election during an ongoing pandemic.

The Board on Tuesday also approved holding all early voting at the Civic Center rather than the Board of Elections and Registration Office, 10 Court Street, across from the Courthouse in downtown Watkinsville, to provide needed space for that process as well.

Reasons for Changes

Elections and Registration Director Fran Leathers, who also chairs the Board, said on Tuesday that the existing facilities for Farmington, Bogart and North High Shoals precincts do not provide enough space to provide privacy to voters using the new voting screens and to provide spacing between voters in a heavy turnout election.

Leathers, Jay Hanley, Ken Davis, Kirk Shook 8/4/2020

The North Oconee High School Field House does provide adequate space, she said, but the Board has agreed to leave school properties because the election space would be blocked during any school lock down.

The voting space in the Spartan Center at Athens Academy is limited, she said, and could be problematic in the case of a lock down there as well.

The Board authorized Leathers to look for alternate sites for Athens Academy voting but to move the voting to Civic Center if she is unsuccessful.

The move to Bishop Baptist Church means Bishop voters will be voting in their precinct and only Farmington voters will be voting outside their precinct.

The move to Grace Fellowship means that North Oconee voters will remain in their precinct while voters at North High Shoals will be voting outside their precinct.

At its meeting in July, the Board agreed, without a formal vote, that Leathers should explore moving forward with actual merger of Farmington and Bishop, North High Shoals and North Oconee, and Athens Academy and Civic Center precincts.

No vote to do that was taken, and Leathers told the Board on Tuesday that its vote to move polling places for the November election was not a final merger decision.

Qualifying

At its July 16 meeting and again on Tuesday, Leathers told the Board that qualifying for the open Post 3 on the Oconee County Board of Commissioners will be from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 17 to 19 at the Board of Elections and Registration Office.

No primary is being held for that special election, necessitated by the death of William “Bubber” Wilkes this spring, so a candidates can pick the party she or he wishes to be listed on the ballot with her or his name.

The County has signed an Intergovernmental Agreement with Bishop, North High Shoals and Watkinsville to handle all aspects of their elections.

Qualifying for Posts 3 through 5 on the Watkinsville City Council will be held those same times and dates, also at the Board of Elections and Registration Office, Leathers said.

Those races are nonpartisan.

Absentee Ballots

Leathers told the Board at the meeting on Tuesday that the county has about 3,000 “rollover absentee ballot requests.” (Assistant Director Jennifer Stone said in an email message after the meeting that the precise figure is 2,730.)

Precinct Map And Current Polling Locations
(Click To Enlarge)

These are elderly or medically restricted voters who indicated prior to the June 9 primary that they wanted to receive absentee ballots for elections for the remainder of the year.

The Secretary of State Office will do the mailing of ballots for these voters, Leathers said.

Leathers said her office is getting additional requests for absentee ballots “every day” and her office will do the mailing for these requests.

Other organizations are mailing out forms that voters can use to request an absentee ballot, she said. While this is legal, she said, it has created some confusion on the part of voters as neither her office nor the Secretary of State Office will be mailing out request forms.

The secure ballot return box for absentee ballots outside the Board of Elections and Registration won’t be open to receive ballots, Leathers said, until the Secretary of State authorizes it closer to the election.

Early Voting

At the July meeting of the Board of Elections and Registration, Board members expressed a desire to keep early voting at the office in Watkinsville.

Leathers had told them that the Civic Center had some events booked during that time and said she would explore alternate sites.

Leathers told the Board on Tuesday that the Civic Center had become available and recommended that only one location be used.

“As we’ve talked before,” she said, “we were concerned about the space here for early voting because we realized that this is going to be a much larger election than we’ve had in the past.”

With “the machines and the space and it is really logistically very difficult to put the number of machines that is necessary in there to accommodate everyone with the privacy issues and COVID issues,” she said.

Early voting will start on Oct. 12 and run through Oct. 30, she said. Saturday early voting will be on Oct. 24, she added, and she said she would consider adding an additional Saturday and even extending the hours during weekday voting.

The County has 30,726 registered voters, Leathers told the Board on Tuesday.

At the July meeting, she said she is expecting about 80 percent participation in the November election

Other Elections

At a called meeting on July 29, the Board approved the addition of the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax referendum for the ballot in November.

The Board of Commissioners had approved putting the question on the ballot at its meeting the night before.

Stone said in an email message on Friday morning that she had just received an email message from Axiver Harris with the Secretary of State Office informing the county that there will be a Special Election in Clarke and Oconee counties for the district attorney in the Western Judicial District.

“Notice is hereby given that a Special Election shall be held in Clarke and Oconee Counties on November 3, 2020 to fill the office of District Attorney, Western Judicial Circuit,” the attachment Stone received read. “A run-off, if needed, shall be held on December 1, 2020.

“Qualifying for the Special Election shall be held in the Elections Division of the Office of Secretary of State,” the notice continued.

A federal court in July ordered the state to hold the election, but the state has been fighting the preliminary injunction issued by the judge.

Video

The first video below is of the Aug. 4 meeting of the Board of Elections and Registration.

I did not attend the meeting, but I gave a camera to Leathers and Stone, who set it up and recorded the meeting as a way of providing information to the public about the changes being discussed by the Board.

The second video below is of the called meeting of the Board on July 29.

Sarah Bell attended and recorded that meeting.

The third video below is of the July 16 meeting of the Board.

Philip Ashford attended the meeting and recorded the video.





7 comments:

Purple Hayes said...

Has anyone else paused to consider the appropriateness of the Oconee Board of Elections and Registration to replace four pubic government-owned polling stations with two private church-owned polling stations? The announced reason is “to provide more space for equipment and voters at what is expected to be a heavy turnout election during an ongoing pandemic.” Kudos to the Board of Elections for trying to provide more protection for voters than the Oconee County Board of Education provides for voters’ children and grandchildren.

However, although courts have ruled that using houses of worship does not violate the “establishment clause,” scientific studies have shown that the polling place can influence voters’ behavior (their votes). An article from Scientific American, for instance, tells us that “a score of recent studies highlight how the building where you vote—whether it’s a church or a school—can subconsciously influence which boxes you check on the ballot. . . . The method by which a polling location can influence someone’s decision is known as priming” (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-different-polling-locations-subconsciously-influence-voters/). According to Wade Rowatt, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, a Christian school, “In a close election, the place where people vote—a school, a church, a government building—could affect the outcome. For example, a higher percentage of people voting in a church instead of a school might vote for a conservative candidate or proposition” (https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=107640).

In short, the voting location can sway the outcome of an election, and the 2020 election in Georgia may prove crucial, up and down the ballot, not just for Oconee County but for the nation. If you question the recent decision by the Oconee County Board of Elections, I encourage you to let the members know and know why you question it. Here is the Board’s URL: https://www.oconeecounty.com/247/Elections-Registration.

If we go back to the stated reasons for the changes, the primary factor is that this year, particularly, voting stations are likely to be overrun and unable safely to accommodate the influx of voters. I can think of other ways to address the situation so that the shift to houses of worship will be unnecessary.

First, permit mail-in voting for all registered voters, or at the least extend the right of absentee voting to all registered voters. We are in a pandemic, a worldwide plague that in the U.S. has already infected 5,000,000 people and cost more than 160,000 deaths and in Georgia has infected more than 216,000 and killed 4200. In our state, approximately 1150 people, on average, are infected each day at present, and approximately 50 people, on average, die each day from the virus (https://www.ajc.com/news/coronavirus-georgia-covid-dashboard/jvoLBozRtBSVSNQDDAuZxH/). Those statistics amply justify voting by absentee ballot. By the way, the conservative Brookings Institution think tank has stated, “There is no evidence to suggest a systematic bias towards one party or another from mail-in ballots. Nor is there any evidence that there is widespread fraud in the use of mail-in ballots” (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/02/low-rates-of-fraud-in-vote-by-mail-states-show-the-benefits-outweigh-the-risks/).

Second, extend early voting hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.

Areas in Georgia already suppress the vote in various and sometimes nefarious ways. Moving polling places to churches may not-so-subtly serve to suppress votes of those who want to vote for political change. At the least, it creates suspicion, yet again, an added notoriety that Georgia and its counties should work to avoid.

Jim Gaither said...

Moving early voting to the Civic Center is a good idea, both for health reasons and for more convenient access and parking.

Lee Becker said...

All,
Please use a Google address with a real name or sign your name at the end of your post.
Thanks.
Lee

Purple Hayes said...

Purple Hayes is the persona for my Blogger site. Outside the virtual world, I'm Christopher Hayes. Apologies for the unintended mistake. Not sure why my personal gmail username did not show up.

Lee Becker said...

Christopher Hayes,
Thank you.
This is far from a perfect solution, but I want to keep the comment section open, and this has helped make that possible.
Lee

Clambo said...

I find this particularly disconcerting given the difficulty of finding the absentee ballot request on the Secretary of State’s website.


“The secure ballot return box for absentee ballots outside the Board of Elections and Registration won’t be open to receive ballots, Leathers said, until the Secretary of State authorizes it closer to the election.”

Thank!
Carrie Mitchell

Clambo said...

I find this statement particularly disconcerting given the difficulty of finding the absentee ballot request on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website......

The secure ballot return box for absentee ballots outside the Board of Elections and Registration won’t be open to receive ballots, Leathers said, until the Secretary of State authorizes it closer to the election.

Also, the Farmington Community Center has plenty of space!

Thanks!

Carrie Mitchell