MEMPHIS, Tenn. — How many of you have flushed $2.5 million dollars down the drain?
Really, how many?
Of course you haven’t. If you do have that much money, will you adopt me?
Anyway, Shelby County Elections Administrator Linda Phillips said County Commissioners could do just that, if they purchase absentee ballot counting machines.
Don’t get the wrong idea, Phillips said, they need those scanners to count the expected 100,000 absentee ballots quickly.
“There’s just not enough people, enough machines, or enough energy,” she said.
Blame it on the pandemic. More people are planning on voting by absentee or mail, across the country.
Phillips said, “The number of requests we’ve seen has slacked off recently. Earlier, before the troubles with the Post Office came to light, we were getting a thousand a day. Now we’re down to about 500.”
The fight still revolves around the type of voting machines Elections Commissioners want for Shelby County. The commission wants primarily computer select machines, but some County Commissioners want paper ballots.
Commissioner Van Turner said it makes no sense to buy everything at once. He said they should spend $2.5 million now and just buy absentee vote counting machines.
But Elections Administrator Linda Phillips said just buying the scanners would be like dumping $2.5 million bucks into the River.
“It’s a package,” she said. “... and the pieces we are purchasing don’t work with other manufacturers systems.”
She said she’ll meet with anybody to try and work something out.
