In the 25 years Debbie Quivey has worked for the Athens County Board of Elections, this past November was the largest election she had ever seen — but for her and the six other women who work in the office, the work didn't end Nov. 9.
Quivey, the director of the Board of Elections, said their job is a continuous cycle of preparing for and cleaning up after elections.
“We’ve been asked before, ‘Well, what do you do the rest of the year?’ We’re constantly getting ready,” she said. “We all take our jobs very seriously.”
The Board of Elections started preparing for the 2016 Presidential Election in December 2015, and still, they have not completed all the duties that went along with the election.
“We still have things to unpack and sort, and we just got all of our ballots boxed up and moved,” Quivey said. “It’s a cleaning process.”
The Board of Elections has to keep working, however, even after the General Election is done. Making sure elections run smoothly is a constant process, which people often don’t realize, Quivey said.
Juliana Salunek, a freshman studying pre-medicine, said she knows the Board of Elections is a place people can go to get registered to vote and find out more about the candidates, but she doesn’t know much about what someone who works there does.
“I honestly don’t know a whole lot about what they do,” she said. “I know they help organize elections and get information out to people.”
The Board of Elections is preparing for a Democratic primary for elected officials in Athens. The office works to check the petitions of each person who hopes to be a candidate to verify they are eligible.
Additionally, the Alexander School District put an income tax school levy issue back on the ballot for May after it failed in November. She said those smaller elections happen all the time without much attention from voters.
“Primaries in the odd years do not get attention because we are a Democrat county,” Quivey said. “We almost always have a Democratic primary because there’s a lot of Democrats and they file."
Damion Diffendal, a freshman studying graphic design, said he knows about presidential and congressional elections, but he didn’t realize there are elections happening frequently.
“I don’t really know anything at all about (elections in Athens),” he said. “I just know about the bigger ones.”
In addition to preparing for the upcoming elections, Quivey said voter registration is an ongoing process in the office. When registering voters, the Board of Elections checks to make sure the voter is not registered in two counties in Ohio. They can check through a computer system that connects all Boards of Elections in the state.
“In Ohio, it’s almost impossible to (be registered in two counties) unless you’ve changed a name or something because we have that duplicate system,” Quivey said.
Regardless of their workload, Quivey said the Board of Elections’ ultimate goal is to make sure everyone in the community has the opportunities voting brings. She said it’s important elections run smoothly, and it’s their job to ensure it.
“Voting is a privilege that we have earned, and I think every U.S. citizen should take advantage of it,” Quivey said.
