Wednesday morning, the Baxter County Election Commission held a public meeting at the Baxter County Courthouse.
As Gary Smith was elected to resume his position on the Commission, the first item of business was the election of positions. Smith was elected as Chairman, Bill Andres will stay as Secretary and Bob Bodenhamer will be Vice Chair.
County Election Coordinator Lindsay Roberts told commissioners the Drug Task Force was approved by County Judge Kevin Litty to move into one of the rooms of the Commissioners building. Building and Grounds has been instructed to place permanent walls between their office and the Election Commissioners office and equipment. Commissioners will host a working session Thursday afternoon to work on cleaning up headquarters.
In other business, the County IT Department created an email address for all the commissioners to use instead of their personal emails. This will insure the Commission retains all emails after a commissioner retires. They also discussed step-by-step instructions on how to use the County portal for clocking in an out. The hourly rate is set at $18.00 and $125 per diem for meetings.
Smith then asked how the Commission was coming along on gathering pollworkers. Roberts stated there are several new people along with current pollworkers returning. Roberts said the State will be providing new poll books before the 204 Primaries. Baxter County Circuit Clerk Canda Reese stated they were in the process of getting First United Methodist Church (FUMC) as a possible early voting site. An agreement was made to run all the poll judges through training at the Courthouse and FUMC along with setting up separate training dates in January for pollworkers and poll judges.
The final item on the agenda was the discussion of the filing period between Nov. 6 – 14 along with the ballot draw for the upcoming Primary. The commissioners set a tentative date for Dec. 5 at 9 in the Baxter County Courtroom for the ballot draw.
Before the meeting adjourned, members of the community asked questions. Chris Fulton of the Mountain Home Observer told the Commission if two of the commissioners joined the committee proposed at Tuesday night’s Quorum Court meeting, it would be considered a public meeting. Another community member, David Taylor stated he heard paper ballots would be cheaper. Reese referred him to speak with Justice of the Peace Dennis Franks who had the current numbers of how much it would cost the county.
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