The Boy Scouts motto is “Be prepared” and that’s exactly what the Guilford County Board of Elections Department and Emergency Services Department were when remnants of Hurricane Zeta hit Guilford County on Thursday, Oct. 29.
The storm brought a lot of rain and high winds to the area and caused power outages across the county including four early voting sites. Fortunately, county staff had anticipated every eventuality they could think of before the election, and that meant there were enough emergency generators to go around and keep the all-important votes coming.
Thursday afternoon, the county’s elections department, with the help of Emergency Services staff, was running generators at four early voting sites: Oak Ridge Town Hall, Bur-Mill Park, Northeast Park and at Guilford Technical Community College’s Cameron Campus.
In a press release announcing that early voting was continuing at the county’s early polling places despite the outages, Guilford County Elections Director Charlie Collicutt stated that was something the department had prepared for.
“Before every election my office works closely with our Emergency Management team to develop a continuity of services plan of action for events such as power loss, water damage and other unforeseen issues that can occur during an election season,” Collicutt said. “In this case, we had a plan for emergency generators to be deployed to keep the polls open without interruptions. Voting is still occurring, and things are moving smoothly at all of our polling sites.”
It’s just one of the many ways in which Collicutt is seriously earning his pay this year.
Hurricane Zeta, which made landfall Wednesday in Louisiana as a Category 2 storm, tore through the southeast before hitting Guilford County and taking out the power at the voting sites.
Early voting ends this weekend on Saturday, Oct. 31 at 3 p.m. Polling locations throughout the county will be open on Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 3 from 6:30 a.m. through 7:30 p.m.
Voters in Guilford County can get more information at http://www.guilfordcountync.gov.
Mother nature can’t even interfere with this election, but people can!
Mail in your vote and also go in person! We need as many as we can get!
It is not too late for a smoking gun from the LEFT.