After 40 years working for Warren County and 20 years as Clerk and Recorder, Tina Conard has announced her retirement and will not be seeking re-election. A Knoxville High School graduate, Conard reminisces on the numerous changes that have occurred over the years in the voting world:
“Before in elections, voter registration ended 28 days before the election, now we have a ‘Grace Period’ where you can register on Election Day. We have early voting; we have Vote-by-Mail, which used to be called absentee voting; now it is just called Vote-by-Mail. They now want us to create a permanent Vote-by-Mail list. We also have a two-week lag after the election to accept Vote-by-Mail ballots and military ballots in the mail. Gone are the days when you pretty much knew who has won the election on election night. Now you have almost two weeks, in the state of Illinois, to get ballots back. So, it has just been a lot of changes through the years.”
Conard recalls the 2000 election for President of the United States between George W. Bush and Albert Gore as when the voting ballot process changed across the nation and electronic ballot systems were first introduced.
**Written by WMOI/WRAM Director of Communications Kelsey Crain**
