The Board of Elections held their monthly meeting August 6th. Randy Howard was voted vice president, with Carson Walker, Dr. Shirley Green-Reese, and Howard himself in favor.

Latimore gave updates, with August 19th being the first day absentee applications will be accepted. October 25, 2024 is the deadline. Latimore also mentioned a special called election to fill the vacancy of a City Council seat. “Qualifying will begin on August 12th through 14th, from 8 am to 4 pm, ending at noon on the 14th.”

Finance director Lorenzo Reddick came before the Board to answer questions about the budget. Walker commented. “I’d like to bring up a point that in the past years, we have had a called meeting where Dr Roberts and Mr. Howard and the board members actually had input in on the budget. This year, we really didn’t. Dr. Latimore turned it in.”

Dr. Valerie Roberts asked for him to inform them ahead of time about the different budget expenditures. Reddick replied. “I don’t have a problem with all y’all’s attending, but we’ll, the way we usually do it is we’ll reach out to the chairman, and the chairman or the director or manager disseminates that message out to everyone.”

Roberts commented. “One of the practices that I’m accustomed to, is having board retreats, where you sit down as a board, and the board goes through these expenditures.”

Reddick replied. “Going forward, you will have January, February to submit a budget, and then we’ll review the budget. So if that’s something that you guys are looking for, that will be enough time for you guys to have a retreat or discuss the budget.”

Howard replied. “We didn’t see [any] of this stuff until the Thursday before ya’ll approved the budget. We never saw it, never had a discussion.”

Howard mentioned another concern. “My concern is right now, I know you got food, zero.” In the past, food would be provided to poll workers who were required to be at the polls all day long.

Reddick replied. “That food budget was zeroed out at the recommendation of Dr. Latimore and the elections manager.” He mentioned the money would be used to increase the pay of those handling the elections.

Howard replied; “they’re not going to get reimbursed, they got to sit out there and [sit] 12-14 hour day, and they are going to have to get their own money to get their own meal?”

Reddick also commented on expenditures. “I don’t know if you guys are aware, but the Board of Commissioner’s Office has been expending fund balance to keep this bank afloat.” He talked about how the Commissioner’s had been operating off of reserves to keep going. “There’s a proposed millage rate increase, but even with that proposed millage rate increase, that does not stop us from having to use that fund balance for 2024.”

Walker suggested that next time they had a class with poll workers, they inform them of how they were paid. He mentioned three poll workers had called him who were not informed of the changes in pay.

Walker also commented on changes in practices. “From what I’ve read recently, now there’re wanting to count the actual paper ballots that go through the machine and are down there in the back of the machine.” He mentioned a concern. “I’m kind of worried about people counting the ballots looking at the voting that’s in there. How do you do that and keep it secret, how people voted?”

Latimore commented; “they don’t have time to sit there and try to see who voted.”

Walker commented further. “At the end of the day on early voting, they wanted [us] to cut that security cord. . . and go in there and make sure the paper ballots that are in the box and the count tally on where you put it in, and then over there at the poll, where you give them your driver’s license, they wanted all those to have to be the exact same number each day of early voting. That’s the way I understood it.” Walker later provided that that was his interpretation, and that the guidelines had only come out this week.

Carson also commented on the budget for legal expenses. “It had been $40,000, $50,000, all the sudden it’s $8,000.”