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Commission backs pilot of convenient vote centers for Hamblen County
Summary
Hamblen County approved a resolution supporting application to be designated a vote-center county; election officials said the plan would reduce precincts from about 16 to roughly six pilot sites and be run like early voting with real-time voter lookup.
The Public Services Committee and later the full legislative body moved to support the Election Commission’s application for designation as a convenient vote-center county and approved a resolution to that effect on Jan. 13.
Election official Gardner told commissioners a vote-center model would reduce about 16 precincts to roughly six vote-center locations, including sites on each end of the county and two inside Morristown. Gardner said the centers would operate like early voting: "You can show up to any of those 1 of those voting centers and vote," with each center hooked up to a real-time central system so a voter cannot vote more than once.
Key operational points discussed Gardner said sites will need hardwired Internet access and VPN connectivity to the county system; the county hopes to use existing county VPN to reduce infrastructure costs. He and commissioners discussed cost savings: three elections per year currently cost about $45,000–$46,000 in poll-worker expenses and the vote-center model could reduce that to roughly $25,000 for comparable elections (figures stated by the presenter).
Commissioners and members of the public asked about logistics: how locations would be selected, whether candidates or pollworkers would need to staff multiple sites, and how the system switches ballot pages to the voter’s precinct (Gardner said it is "just a button you push" in the same way early voting displays all precincts on-site). Accessibility concerns and turnout patterns were also discussed; presenters noted that about 70% of votes in the November election were early absentee and about 7,800 residents voted on election day.
Motion and outcome The commission approved the resolution to proceed with the vote-center designation and indicated it would follow state-mandated public meetings on site selection and implementation. The motion carried in committee and later in the legislative body.
Ending: Election staff will work with state officials and local stakeholders on site identification, infrastructure requirements and outreach before a vote-center pilot is implemented.
