By Shannon McFarlin News Director
Paris, Tenn.—Meeting by conference call Monday afternoon, the Henry County Elections Commission discussed how to accommodate social distancing guidelines and still conduct the necessary public business that will be required in the weeks and months ahead.
Looking ahead to the August 6 primary (state and federal primary and county general election), Elections Administrator DeLaina Green said the state is expecting a huge increase in absentee voting. Green said May 8 is the first day to start handling absentee voting requests for the August election, with July 30 the last day for absentee voting.
Green said there are over 8,000 voters who are over the age of 60 in Henry County and that over-60 voters are automatically eligible for absentee voting.
“In-house, we do not have enough envelopes and stamps to start processing what may be expected in terms of numbers of absentee voters,” Green said. “There has been mention by the state of hiring extra people but the people would have to be suited up and not handle anything else in office” in order to meet COVID-19 requirements.
Green said people who are interested in voting by absentee ballot for the upcoming election can call the Elections Office at 642 0411 or go the govotetn app to get a form. “But we would rather they call our office,” she said.
Office personnel around the state are trying to plan for the probable increase in absentee ballots, she said. “We have enough equipment for one work station and we can scan roughly 500 cards an hour here. We’ve never had a problem keeping up, but with the increase expected, we don’t know what will happen.”
Green said there currently are 8,161 over-60 voters out of a total electorate of 20,000.
In March of 2020, there were 2,670 voters over-60 out of the total 4,127 who voted.
In August 2018, there were 4,151 over-60 voters out of a total 6,949 and in November of 2018, 6,021 over-60 voters out of a total 10,977 who voted.
Green said her goal would be to encourage countians to look at absentee voting. The state is looking at a state-wide mailing of postcards to every person over 60 and the state would take care of mailing, postage “and that would help us,” she said. “The more people we can get to absentee vote the better it will be election day.”
How to handle voting at nursing homes and retirement communities is still undecided she said, since voting is required in-person. Early voting will also require some planning and may require increasing the work force available at elections offices.
In other business, Green asked board members how they wanted to handle the upcoming June 1 meeting, at which locking the ballot boxes is required. “At least one Republican member and one Democrat member are required to lock the boxes,” she said.
Members indicated they were prefer meeting in person, but set up work stations set up apart from each other to meet social distancing requirements. Green said she will have masks and gloves available for everyone coming to the meeting.
Meetings set beyond the June 1 session will be handled on a meeting-by-meeting basis, she said.