With the sudden departure of Sylvia Bermudez from the county, the Board of Supervisors will again consider a change to the chief election official position.
Nothing is written in stone, and we’ve only heard the aloud thoughts of Supervisors’ Chairman Michael Kelley, but the registrar of voters position is quite high-profile, especially coming off of an election with a record number of registered voters casting a near-record number of votes.
Bermudez was the county’s clerk of the Board of Supervisors for many years, joining the clerk’s office in an assistant capacity in 2011. She had registrar of voters added to her title just two years ago, when the board made the elected position an appointed position.
It doesn’t sound as though the county wants to change the way the position operates; rather, the board could consider splitting apart elections and the clerk of the board, and possibly taking away department head status for both.
Kelley mentioned these potential options, and it was expected that the positions would be discussed in closed session Tuesday.
We’ve written about the registrar of voters post many times over the years. We’ve often wondered if we were too hard on Dolores Provencio when it was an elected position, considering she had two full departments to maintain.
That said, we still believe going to an appointed position was the right decision, adding a layer of accountability that sometimes might be missing from elected positions such as this. It’s one thing to be unhappy with performance, and quite another to mount a recall or wait out a term.
But we digress.
We could certainly see the justification for splitting the departments, especially elections. As Imperial County’s population increases, and more people become engaged and become more willing to vote, and as voters continue to move away from actual polling places and toward mail-in ballots, there will be much work for elections staff to do. It’s a year-round feat.
The one thing Kelley said that makes us scratch our head a bit is the idea about eliminating a department head position instead of creating two. We can see the need for both departments to those positions.
We suppose the departments could be folded under existing departments, but with something as specialized as elections and clerk of the board, for that matter, there needs to be people in charge with training and experience and able to call the shots.
The way the elections department has been run recently has us quite satisfied with the changes that transpired two years ago. But it’s also a testament to the staff, some of which was there when Provencio was in charge and excelled under Bermudez as well.
Whatever changes occur, we just hope everything runs as well as it has been up to this point.
THE ISSUE:
County election official has resigned.
WE SAY:
Some changes could be good, but we like what has been happening.
WHAT DO YOU SAY?
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