Elections board prepared for COVID Election Day

NORWALK — The Huron County Board of Elections is working to ensure the election is fair, impartial and safe. How can voters do their part? Vote early and follow COVID-19 safety protocols, including wearing a mask and following social distance guidelines. "The earlier, the better. Especially if you're doing absentee and mailing. You've got to give the post office lots of time to get it back or use the dropbox," she said. Lesch said everyone who wants to vote can and by voting early so there's no concern about waiting in line. Ben Kline, the board's deputy director, said they started developing a plan in early summer to keep elections and poll workers as safe as possible. "Hand sanitizer is going to be at every location, along with disinfectant spray. We have the very large sneeze guards for our workers and the public," he said. "Anything that the voters are going to touching, that's going to be used one time then disinfected." Wearing masks while voting will also be enforced and the polling locations will have masks on-hand for anyone who comes without one. Board director Cecilia Blevins said they went to every polling location to figure out how to set things up socially distanced and in a way where voters will enter through one door and exit from another. "Hopefully everything works out on Election Day, where everything's set up perfectly and everything runs smoothly," she said. "We did take all those precautions to make sure that there's a one-way path." All polling locations of Election Day will have curbside voting available for those who are sick or unable to get out of their car. Blevins said the election this year is "nothing like 2016." "This is crazy busy. The mail requests are twice as many as we had already in 2016," she said. "It's been very hectic, we've had long days." For early voting, the area is sanitized every half hour and polling locations on Election Day will do the same. If someone doesn't receive their absentee ballot by election day, they still have the option of going in-person to vote. "We feel we're well prepared. We don't anticipate a lot of problems," board member Tom McLaughlin said. In addition to the board's full-time staff, Kline said their seasonal workers have been exceptional. "They've been above and beyond," he said. "They deserve a lot of credit, we couldn't get it done without them." Blevins said they have extra poll workers at polling locations this year for the purpose of cleaning. "There is someone that can go around and clean, they're able to do that," she said. "The workers also can take more breaks and go wash hands."