Putnam County Election Commission is hoping to get more Democratic poll workers come August elections.
Administrator of Elections Michele Honeycutt said that ideally, election sites will have an even number of Democratic and Republican poll workers. She said that right now they’re fine for the May election because they don’t have time to train more poll workers.
“We’re not at 50 percent,” Honeycutt said. “We have a few precincts, we tried to put 50 percent at least in our 7th district, that’s where there’s a candidate on the Democratic ballot. But some precincts may have one Democrat in the whole precinct.”
Honeycutt said that while they’re set for early election season, they’ll definitely take volunteers for August and November. She said that between early voting and the regular election season, they typically have poll workers drop out because of sickness or emergency situations.
Honeycutt said it’s important to try for an even number of poll workers because potential situations can arise at poll locations that require assistance from one Democrat and one Republican election worker.
“Let’s say someone leaves the machine without pushing the ‘cast vote’ button,” Honeycutt said. “The machine worker can not go around and just push it for them. They’re instructed to try and get that person, so if they’ve walked to go out and try to get them to come back to push the button. If they can’t get them, then we require one from each party to go into the machine, make sure no one has changed anything, and then they push the ‘cast vote’ button.”
Honeycutt said that if someone is interested in registering to be a poll worker, they can do so online. She said that they must be at least 16 years of age.
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