After a 3-0 vote Monday by the Bulloch County Board of Elections and Registration, the county and city are both proposing to make the community building at Luetta Moore Park the new voting place for their precincts that formerly voted in the cafeteria at the William James Educational Complex.

This follows an April 18 request by new county Board of Elections member Lawton Sack for Statesboro City Council to postpone a decision to reassign the Statesboro One city voting precinct to Luetta Moore Park. After advertising the proposed location for an April 18 hearing, the council voted 3-2 at that time to table any action for one month.

Last week the city clerk placed a new notice in the Statesboro Herald for a hearing during the 5:30 p.m.  May 16 City Council meeting, again citing the “Luetta Moore Building,” formally the Jones-Love Cultural Center at Luetta Moore Park on Martin Luther King Jr.  Drive, as the proposed voting place.

The county Board of Elections and Registration’s decision is separate, affecting what is called simply the “Statesboro” precinct for county, state and federal elections. But officials have expressed a desire to keep them in the same voting place to avoid confusing voters.

Statesboro’s council requested a clear recommendation from county Election Supervisor Shontay Jones, and she delivered one to the county Elections Board at 1:30 p.m. Monday.

“What I’ve provided to the board are some facts I hope will be helpful in making a decision,” Jones said. “Our office is still a hundred percent in full support of relocating to Luetta Moore, as we’ve stated before.”

Board members had previously expressed some concerns about the size of the building and the number of voters it will need to accommodate, as well as the available parking. So Jones and elections assistant Marilyn Fronte went to the Jones-Love Center on May 2 and set up a “mock election,” minus actual voting equipment but with tables and spaces for the flow of the crowd.

‘Adequate space’

“I just feel it’s going to be an adequate space,” Jones said. “It’s going to be a smaller space than what people are coming from.”

She noted that there are 82 parking spaces at the site plus 34 additional spaces across the street.

The building has a covered porch for weather, provides a “large voting area” and  will be available  to the county at no charge, she  reported. This, Jones stated in her information sheet, would save the county up to $600-$1,500 in an election year in comparison to some other locations with $100 or $250 per-election cleaning or usage fees.

She also noted that in last November’s general election only 1,092 people from Statesboro precinct voted at the William James Complex on the traditional Election Day, after 2,086 had voted early or absentee. For the Dec. 6 U.S. Senate runoff, 1,192 voters in the precinct cast ballots on Election Day, after 1,629 voted early or absentee.

“When we went back and pulled Poll Pad data, it looks like ‘Statesboro’ for both elections was averaging maybe about 86 to 90 people an hour, at that election,” Jones said.

Probably 100 people could fit “comfortably” in the Luetta Moore Park building at one time, she had said.

For comparison, Jones pointed out that similar or larger numbers of people voted each day at the elections office in the North Main Annex during five days leading up to the December runoff. With just eight voting machines set up and the annex’s parking reduced by ongoing renovations, from 1,514 to 1,945 voters filed through each day.

For state and national elections, 20 machines would be set up at the Luetta Moore Park building, as was done at the William James Complex, she said.

Fronte noted that sidewalks approach the park on both sides of the street and that the building is equipped with accessibility ramps.

“It is very accessible, well lit,” she said.

The park, owned by the city and operated by the Bulloch County Recreation and Parks Department, hosts an after-school program. But Jones said she has been assured this can be scheduled to make the building available for elections, with setup on Monday, voting on Tuesday and takedown on Wednesday morning.

County Attorney Jeff Akins noted that a section of the state election law code says public buildings should chosen as polling places “wherever practical” and consistent with the law on access for voters with disabilities. 

One site that had been suggested earlier this year, and which was once included by Jones in a list of possibilities, is a private event venue.

Due diligence

Sack noted that his first Board of Elections meeting was in April, after which he had sought information on the available sites. He had spoken to Superintendent of Schools Charles Wilson, who suggested the William James Complex gym – which would have required renovations for Americans with Disabilities Act compliance – and spaces at the old Julia P. Bryant School complex, which also did not appear feasible, Sack said.

He said he had also talked to county Board of Commissioners Chairman Roy Thompson, who did not think the commissioners’ boardroom would be suitable because of limited parking.

“So just to let you know, there’s a lot that’s been done over this last month, and I realize I’ve asked a lot of questions here, but the idea behind this was just to do our due diligence as a board, of making sure that this location was going to be suitable not only in 2023 but in 2024 and also years down the road,” Sack said.

He said he had asked City Council to postpone its decision by a month “so all of these options could be looked at.”

“There was nothing here that was nefarious,” Sack added. “All of this was due diligence, and I felt like that there were a lot of questions that needed to be asked, and most of these have been answered.”

As previously reported, Sack is also chair of the Bulloch County Republican Party, which does not prevent him from serving on the Elections Board. The only other non-city-official who spoke on the topic at the April 18 council meeting had been Len Fatica, chair of the Bulloch County Democratic Committee. Fatica had urged the council to go ahead and choose the Luetta Moore site for city elections.

Jeff Yawn, a former City Council member, was the current Board of Elections member who made the motion Monday, seconded by Sack, to publish the notice for a hearing with the Luetta Moore Park building proposed as the county’s Statesboro precinct voting location. Board Chair Theresa Jackson joined in making the vote 3-0.

So the proposal will be advertised for public comment and an Elections Board vote at the 1:30 p.m. June 12 meeting.

The William James Complex, which in the 20th century was William James High School and Williams James Middle School, served as a voting place for more than 20 years. But after last fall’s elections, Bulloch County Schools staff leaders told the city and county boards this is no longer compatible with safety requirements for the building’s current classroom uses.