Chairman: Poll worker ineligible to vote

A Madison County supervisor is looking for answers after being alerted by an election commissioner that a man ineligible to vote was working as a poll worker during the Democrat primary last month. 

Pat Truesdale, chairman of the Madison County Election Commission, sent supervisors and county officials an email last week claiming fraud by a poll worker after discovering the county paid a disenfranchised person not only money for working but also transporting ballots. 

Madison County had a contract with the Republican Party but the Democrat Party did not want the county to help run their primary election. 

As a result, according to Truesdale, a person ineligible to vote worked the election. 

“During the last primary cycle the Democrats consistently refused to share any information of the names or numbers of people they had hired to serve as poll workers/managers,” Truesdale wrote in her email. 

She said they weren’t sure if the precincts would be fully staffed and later found they were over-staffed, with “as many as 15-17 people working on election day.”

“This cost Madison County heavily,” she said. 

She said a man who was purged from the voter rolls for “having a disenfranchising crime conviction of embezzlement from Rankin County” who knew they were ineligible to vote still worked the polls.

“He had tried to vote absentee in person at the Circuit Clerk’s office…,” she wrote. “After looking at his record in SEMS I advised (circuit clerk employee) that unless he could furnish proof his conviction had been vacated or his voting rights restored he was unable to vote absentee.”

The individual was paid $264.80, including $50 for transport to/from the precinct and $14.80 in mileage. 

“It is my sincere hope that the Board of Supervisors would work out a method in which the election commission can be in charge of all elections and hiring of all poll workers to to avoid this happening again,” she concluded. 

District 2 Supervisor Trey Baxter is hoping to get some answers. 

“I think that both parties should have a contract with the county to run the primaries,” he said. “The rules have to be followed. They are there for a reason.”

He said he wants to explore whether the county can reclaim the payment made given the facts he was ineligible to work.