The Putnam County Board of Elections and Registration has “full boats” of poll workers for the Nov. 7 general election—but apparently will not name a full-time elections supervisor until the election is over and done with.
At last week’s monthly board meeting, board members went into executive session to discuss “a personnel matter” and came out with no action to report.
“The net is still out,” Chairman Charles Patten said afterward. In the 10 weeks since veteran supervisor Lynne Laseter submitted her resignation, effective Sept. 1, the board has received just one application.
The opening is listed on the county’s website, as well as the state’s (glga.org), but “nobody has even called” for information or a printed application, the chairman added. “Experience is the prime item” the board is looking for, Patten said. “There are a lot of counties looking. There could be some stiff competition.”
Purely conjecture, but the lack of interest might be influenced by the last two years of national (and Georgia) stories about election officials being threatened, sometimes directly, sometimes via emails—anonymously, of course—with pictures of nooses or the names of the officials’ children and where they go to school.
Other than the supervisor vacancy, preparations for the November election seem to be going off without any hitches. The five members of the board (two appointed by Democrats: Annie Parker and Emory Walden, and two by Republicans: Lorraine Webb and Dick Forrester, plus Patten), have all been through at least two full election cycles.
Laseter stayed on for another couple of weeks of administrative duties, plus training sessions for poll workers, before going back to the details of her Oct. 2 wedding and moving to Greenville, S.C.
She reported to the board that the office’s 2022-23 budget had been approved by the county commissioners; that no new equipment was involved beyond basic election supplies and a storage cabinet; that absentee ballots had been approved and sent to the printer; and that support staff would be “on tap” Nov. 6-8, from Dominion Voting Systems.