A rose to all of our election officials as the Nov. 3 election approaches. For weeks now, those in charge of conducting our elections have been working long hours — training poll workers, distributing absentee ballots, handling new or updated voter registration and putting together safeguards that will protect voters as they go to the polls. As the only state that doesn’t allow early voting, the efforts to make sure our polling places are safe is of paramount importance. That involves additional training for poll workers, too. The heavy volume on voter registrations and absentee voting (absentee voting has already surpassed the total absentee vote from 2016) means it’s been an extremely busy time for our circuit clerk offices, whose work will continue through Nov. 3.
A rose to Starkville High School’s administration for safely salvaging one element of tradition even as the school works to beat back a COVID-19 outbreak. With the school’s football team under quarantine for two weeks, Friday’s Homecoming game, along with the Homecoming dance, were canceled as a safety precaution. There were 11 cases of the virus district-wide as of Thursday — the highest number of cases in one week since the school year began. Despite that, the school did manage to continue with one Homecoming tradition: its parade, which was staged Thursday along Yellow Jacket Drive and featured the familiar procession of cheerleaders, band members and floats. Since March, students have had to forfeit many of the things that make the school year memorable, so it’s a boost to the morale when some events — those that can be held safely — continue. We applaud everyone who helped make the parade a success.
A rose to the staff of the Local History Department (LHD) at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System (CLPL) which has spent the last few months creating over 5,000 digital images relating to local history. The digital collections are available on the Mississippi Digital Library (MDL) and can be utilized by teachers, students, researchers, genealogists and the general-public. Due to in-person access restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the LHD turned to digitizing portions of their records currently stored in the Billups-Garth Archives. Archivist Mona Vance-Ali said, “This is a huge leap forward for what the library archives now offer online. People from all over the world can now access these records.” We applaud the hard work of everyone involved in this effort to preserve our local history.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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