Just 31 days before the Nov. 8 election, circuit clerks are reporting surges in voter registrations.
“It has exploded, absolutely exploded,” Sheryl Elmore, election deputy clerk for the Oktibbeha County Circuit Clerk’s office. “It was steady, but in the past three weeks, we’ve added probably 1,400 new registrations, and that doesn’t even include the registrations from Mississippi State’s drives. It’s been extremely busy.”
Prospective voters have until noon Saturday to register in time to vote in the Nov. 8 election.
Circuit clerks’ offices throughout the state are open from 8 a.m. until noon Saturday for last-minute registrations.
“It’s been really, really busy, especially this last week,” said Lowndes County Circuit Clerk Teresa Barksdale. “We’ve had a lot of young people, a lot of students coming in to register. We’ve also had a lot of people coming in to make changes in their registration, too.”
Barksdale said her office has registered 395 new voters over the past three weeks with 1,095 voters dropping in to update their information.
The numbers are even bigger in Starkville.
“When you combine those 1,400 new registrations with the voter drives at Mississippi State, which turned in 1,385 registrations, we’re probably pretty close to 27,000 registered voters [total],” Elmore said. “And we expect we’ll have more coming in Friday and Saturday.”
Barksdale said the new registrations will likely push the Lowndes voter registration number about the 40,000 mark.
There is also an up-tick in absentee voting, which began Sept. 26.
“We’ve had probably 40 or 50 absentee voters cast [ballots] so far,” Elmore said. “It’s still early. We expect that will pick up a lot as we get closer to the election. Four years ago, we had about 1,800 absentee votes cast, so we expect to see similar numbers this year, if not more.”
Barksdale said her office has recorded 180 absentee ballots so far. Another 520 requests for absentee ballots had been mailed as of Wednesday.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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