At the request of Circuit Clerk Camille Roberts, paper poll books will be phased out in favor of electronic poll books.
These electronic poll books are already on hand in the circuit clerk’s office. Most poll workers who will use the tablet-like devices have already been trained.
Lee County Supervisors formally approved purchasing the poll books at a Monday morning meeting. The county will pay about $95,700 for 60 electronic poll books.
Poll books list every citizen registered to vote within a given precinct. Poll workers use these books to ensure that prospective voters actually are registered to vote, are in the correct precinct and have not already voted.
Electronic poll books achieve the same purpose but store the information digitally on an electronic tablet and allow for quicker access to a voter’s information.
Voters with a driver’s license can have the license scanned. The electronic poll books will then automatically locate the voter’s information.
This should cut down on the amount of time it takes poll workers to locate each voter’s name in the book. This in turn should help the lines move faster, Roberts said.
“Probably 99 percent of people already have their driver’s license out because they use it for voter ID,” Roberts said. “It’s already second nature.”
If a registered voter tries to vote at the wrong precinct, poll workers can also use the electronic devices to automatically determine the precinct at which that voter should cast a ballot.
Roberts said this will be a big time saver. Right now, poll workers must call the circuit clerk’s office to determine a voter’s correct precinct.
Some Lee County voters have already cast a ballot. Roberts said her office has thus far received approximately 1,000 absentee ballots.
That’s a little low for a presidential election, according to Roberts, but she expects the number to rise sharply over the next few weeks.
To facilitate absentee voting, the circuit clerk’s office will be open from 8 a.m. until noon on the two Saturday’s prior to election day, Oct. 29 and Nov. 5.
Absentee ballots may also be cast during normal business hours, which are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
©2016 the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo, Miss.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
