Carrie Phillips knows well the toughest challenge of adapting to election consolidation. “Learning the new laws and finding who’s responsible for doing what,” said Phillips, Kootenai County Elections supervisor.
Now that Kootenai County Elections is charged with running all local elections under new state law, it means a larger workload, Phillips said. The county has been harried with prepping for the upcoming May 17 elections, in which 11 highway, library and school districts have seats up for election. “It has been a little bit stressful and causing more workload for us,” Phillips said.
Part of the county’s responsibilities lately, said Clerk Cliff Hayes, have been training taxing districts on the changes under the Elections Consolidation law that took affect on Jan. 1.
“There were significant changes to what the districts did, to what the county now has to do,” Hayes said. For instance, taxing districts previously counted paper ballots, he said. Ballots will now be counted by the county’s electronic ballot machines. “The electronic counting is significant,” he said of expediting the process.
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