Monday marks the last day to register to vote for the primary election on May 21, but according to the Daviess County Clerk’s Office, not many last-minute registrations are expected. In fact, not a lot of people are expected at the polls for the primary, which has proven to be the lowest election in the cycle.
Richard House, chief deputy for the Daviess County Clerk’s Offices, said in 2015, Daviess County saw a 12.1 percent turnout for the primary and in 2011 only 8.3 percent.
Despite anticipating low numbers in May, House said his office is working hard to implement changes across the county to make election day more efficient.
One of those changes will be electronic polling books at every precinct. The electronic polling book is set up on an iPad, eliminating the roster book voters are accustomed to. Voters will hand the election official their driver’s license to be scanned by the iPad. The software will then pull up the voter’s information to be verified. With the check-in process complete, voters are then sent to the voting booth to complete their electronic or paper ballot.
House said three precincts will change locations for this upcoming election. Northtown precinct at Audubon Elementary School will move to Crosspointe Baptist Church and Southtown precinct will move from Centre Court to the Boys and Girls Club off of Carter Road.
“Those two were directly done from the recount where we had precincts with different legislative districts in the same room,” House said.
During the election recount of the District 13 legislative race, it appeared that two voters signed in to Southtown, which represented the 7th House District, and then voted in precinct 44, which represented the 13th House District. These precincts were previously housed at Good Shepherd Church, but in 2018 were moved to Centre Court where the precincts did not have as much space.
“To keep that from ever happening again, we are splitting all those precincts up,” House said. “Even though it won’t matter in this election, we are just prepping for next year.”
House said at least one more precinct will be moved in the fall for this same reason..
The last precinct to move this election will be city precinct 18, which will move from the Owensboro Parks and Recreation office back to its original precinct location at New Life Church, where House said there is better parking and building accessibility.
These three changes are just a small part of the massive overhaul the County Clerk’s Office has been working on. With hopes of reducing precincts from 85 to 50, House said he and his team have been drafting a consolidation plan for weeks.
According to House, that plan was supposed to be presented to Frankfort last week, but last minute changes regarding wet and dry precincts caused a delay. House expects the precinct consolidation plan to be complete this week and presented to Frankfort by Wednesday.
Reducing the number of precincts will reap major benefits for the County, House said, namely cutting down on the number of new voting machines that will need to be purchased in the near future.
In a Daviess County Fiscal Court meeting late last month, Judge-Executive Al Mattingly suggested increasing the occupational tax as a possible solution to pull Fiscal Court out of a $2.5 million deficit. Mattingly said he believes the budget is already running on fumes as it is, and that an increase in revenue may be necessary to cover costs for the many improvements needed across the county — including new voting machines, which he estimated would cost $1 million.
House said that consolidating precincts and therefore reducing the number of poll workers will offset some of the cost of replacing voting machines. The county had hoped to receive federal funding to replace the aging voting machines, according to House, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen.
House said the changes the clerk’s office will make over 2019 will hopefully keep the county cost of replacing voting machines below $800,000.
“We are hoping to become more efficient through this technology and save the County a lot of money,” House said.
Reducing the number of precincts not only helps out financially, but also helps reduce the need for poll workers, which House said are positions that are hard to fill.
“With 85 precincts you have to have 340 poll workers,” House said. “That is getting harder and harder.”
As of Friday, House said the County Clerk’s Office needed 30 more poll workers for the upcoming primary.
House reminded the public that Monday is the last day for new registrations, address and name changes for the primary election. If a voter were to change parties, he or she would not be eligible to vote in the primary.
Voters can make these changes in person at the Daviess County Clerk’s Office or online at GoVoteKY.com.
