Mississippi Advisory Opinions March 29, 2010: No. 2010-00128 (March 29, 2010)

No. 2010-00128.

Dear Ms. Martin:

Attorney General Jim Hood received your letter of request and assigned it to me for research and reply.

You state that some precincts in Montgomery County are currently divided alphabetically. You cite the Duck Hill precinct as an example, explaining that "Duck Hill - Box 1" contains only voters whose last names begins with A-K and "Duck Hill - Box 2" contains only voters whose last names begins with L - Z. You state that such configurations cause additional manual work, duplicate work, and the creation of multiple unnecessary splits in the Statewide Elections Management System (SEMS). You ask what requirements your office needs to comply with in order to consolidate these divided precincts for purposes of SEMS.

You, as the county registrar, have the authority to modify voter information in SEMS when necessary to insure that the system is properly administered.

Mississippi Code Annotated Section 23-15-165 (4) (Revised 2007) provides in part:

The Secretary of State may, with the assistance of the advisory committee, adopt rules and regulations necessary to administer the Statewide Election Management System. Such rules and regulations shall at least:

***

(c) Provide security to insure that only the registrar, or his designee or other appropriate official, as the law may require, can add information to, delete information from and modify information in the system;

***

(f) Provide a procedure that will allow the registrar, or his designee or other appropriate official, as the law may require, to identify the precinct and subprecinct to which a voter should be assigned;

***

We are informed by the office of Secretary of State that no regulations regarding this matter have been adopted. However, it is the clear legislative intent that county registrars may modify the information in SEMS when necessary to insure the proper administration of the system.

It is our understanding that the Montgomery County Election Commission, acting pursuant to Section 23-15-133 established subprecincts in certain county precincts. In the example you set forth in your letter, the Duck Hill subprecincts were designated "Duck Hill - Box 1" and Duck Hill - Box 2." We note that Section 23-15-133 requires subprecincts to be designated with suffixes "a", "b", "c", et cetera , for as many subprecincts as are formed for any given precinct, for example, "Duck Hill A" and "Duck Hill B."

It is our further understanding that these subprecincts are in effect and that separate pollbooks for each such subprecinct are utilized in county, state and federal elections. However, as we understand it, in order for SEMS to work properly, the voter information in SEMS needs to be consolidated into one precinct with no subprecincts. You state in your letter that SEMS can produce the needed subprecint pollbooks from the consolidated voter information.

In order to insure the proper functioning and administration of SEMS, a circuit clerk as the registrar of voters and the custodian of the voter registration records, is authorized to consolidate the voter information in SEMS, currently separated by subprecincts, into one precinct without subprecincts. Elections will, of course, be conducted utilizing the subprecincts as created by the Montgomery County Election Commission.

The methodology used to effect the consolidation is left to the sound discretion of the circuit clerk.

Sincerely,

JIM HOOD, ATTORNEY GENERAL

By:

Phil Carter

Special Assistant Attorney General