2nd Columbus elections worker contracts COVID-19, but office is open for registration
After closing last week when a worker tested positive for COVID-19, the Muscogee County elections office reopened Monday, the last day Georgians can register to vote in the state’s Jan. 5 runoffs.
The office had closed Thursday to be sanitized after an employee was found to have contracted the coronavirus. Other staff were tested over the weekend, when a second worker tested positive, said Nancy Boren, executive director of the Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registration.
Both workers are quarantining at home. Neither has symptoms severe enough to warrant hospitalization, Boren said. “They worked in the same big room,” she said.
Those employees were not in the Columbus Council chambers last week when the staff recounted votes from the Nov. 3 presidential election, but other staffers conducting the recount could have been exposed to the disease, so that room also was sanitized.
Enough workers tested negative for the virus to reopen the elections office Monday, when any Columbus resident who’d like to register in person to vote in the runoffs can do so until 5 p.m. The office is on the second floor of the City Services Center, off Macon Road at 3111 Citizens Way. The phone number is 653-4392.
Georgians also can register online at the Secretary of State’s “My Voter Page,” www.mvp.sos.ga.gov/MVP, and check their registration status if they’re unsure of their eligibility. Any youth who will turn 18 by Jan. 5 may register.
Early voting in Georgia’s U.S. Senate and Public Service Commission runoffs will begin Dec. 14.