The Putnam County Election Commission has set early voting hours for the primary elections set for next May.
Putnam County Election Administrator Jennifer Murphy said these hours are the same as those used for the past several years, as they have not had any complaints or issues. Murphy said Election Day voting will be from 9am-7pm, even though people often get confused with Nashville’s Election Day voting hours, which are 7am-7pm.
“The reason we do that, number one, is we are not as big as Nashville,” Murphy said. “But we also want to retain our workers, and adding in those extra couple of hours, it would be really hard to get our workers to come in.”
Early Voting will begin on April 15 and run through April 30. Early voting hours will be 8am-5pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 8am-7pm on Thursdays, and 9am-1pm on Saturdays. Murphy said the y extend hours Thursday to provide another opportunity for those who work a chance to vote during the week.
“We noticed quite a while ago that we have a lot of residents and voters who mostly they will work and travel usually to Nashville, and they can’t make it back before 5pm,” Murphy said. “So we on Thursdays extended hours until 7pm to try and help those folks, and also the Saturday hours are available for them as well. But we do find that it helps people who work out of town or even people who have forgotten.”
Murphy said there was some consideration to changing the voting hours.
“We’ve looked at it a couple of times,” Murphy said. “Mostly we have always went back to these same hours. The 8am-5pm, and then Thursday 8am-7pm, Saturday 9am-1pm. It’s just worked so well. So we’ve talked about it, but we always go back to the regular hours.”
Murphy said there is still more work to do to prepare for the elections. Murphy said the commission plans to hit the ground running over the next several months to prepare.