Christian County will double the number of voting centers to 16 in November, and the county election board will ask fiscal court to spend $29,000 for the additional voting machines needed for the expansion.
At their regular monthly meeting Thursday morning, election board members voted unanimously to add three more polling places — at Hopkinsville Middle School, Friendship House in the Christian Care Communities complex off North Drive, and Cedar Grove Baptist Church in the Eastside neighborhood— to the 13 sites previously discussed.
Board member Jason Newby came to the meeting confident that election officials could save the county money and avoid buying new machines even with the additional sites. He proposed taking one machine from sites that were already using three or more in the May primary and moving those to the new sites.
But a longtime poll worker helped change his mind.
“If you take one machine away from the senior center, you are going to have lines,” said Barbara Morris, who has been a poll worker for 20 years.
Morris described how smoothly things have run at the senior center with three machines. Reducing that number could create wait times, she said.
“We need to listen to her,” said Newby, who then decided against pursuing his motion to not buy more machines.
After the meeting, Newby told Hoptown Chronicle, “We’d be crazy not to listen to someone with that kind of experience.”
County Clerk Mike Kem, who serves on the election board, favored buying new machines and stressed that county magistrates were ready to approve the expenditure. He said he didn’t want to see anyone turned away from a polling place because of long lines.
Polling place confusion
The county had eight voting centers in the May primary. Many voters were apparently uninformed about those locations and thought the county had reverted to its pre-pandemic system with 31 voting precincts.
In a precinct system, a voter must cast their ballot at their assigned precinct. But voting centers, first used in the 2020 general election to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus, allow voters to cast a ballot in any of the county’s polling places.
The board called a special meeting last week to discuss the issues, but because it failed to abide by open meetings law requirements, no action was taken until the regular meeting this week.
One citizen who spoke up at Thursday’s meeting said she wanted to go back to 31 voting precincts.
“For some things, change is not always good,” said Sally Allen, adding she thought there should be only one day to vote.
Kem disagreed.
“I’m for early voting … the more the better,” he said.
Kentucky now allows early voting on three days — a change that lawmakers adopted following the 2020 general election.
New voting locations
In other matters, the election board agreed that Booker T. Washington School could serve as a voting center if an inspection shows Cedar Grove Baptist Church doesn’t meet handicap-accessibility requirements. Either location would fulfill a request from residents and the local League of Women Voters to add a polling place in the Eastside neighborhood.
The 13 polling sites previously identified for the November general election are:
- Christian County Courthouse
- Senior Citizens Center
- James E. Bruce Convention Center
- Boys and Girls Club
- Indian Hills Elementary
- Crofton City Hall
- Sinking Fork Baptist Church
- Pembroke Baptist Church
- South Christian Elementary School
- Oak Grove Community Center
- Concord Baptist Church
- New Barren Springs Baptist Church
- New Palestine Baptist Church
League of Women Voters president Nikki Chambers and Mike Foster, the retired county attorney, both spoke in favor of adding Friendship House as a polling place.
Poll worker pay
The board also voted to recommend that fiscal court increase pay for poll workers on early voting and absentee days to $200.
During last week’s fiscal court meeting, magistrates voted to increase pay for election day poll workers from $200 to $300. Election day workers typically have longer hours because they have to close the polls.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
