Secretary of State visits Columbus Rotary club to educate on his office duties

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – The Secretary of State’s Office has a lot on its plate, and today Michael Watson was in Columbus to educate area leaders on some of what his office does.

Watson explained some of the areas his office oversees. Business services have been getting a lot of interest lately.

Watson, the governor, and lawmakers have been working to streamline regulations on businesses and loosen licensing requirements in certain fields to make it easier to do business in the state.

But with party primaries coming up, he is also busy with the office’s most visible job, handling elections in the state.

Watson has been spearheading efforts to clean up voter roles.

“So, when we came in, we had about 43 counties out of 82 that had 90% or more of their voting-age population on the voter rolls. I would like to see that number lower, 80ish probably, and then we had 7 counties that had 100% or more, which again, just shouldn’t be the case,” said Secretary of State Micahel Watson. “So, talking to our commissioners again; they’re the ones that have the role of cleaning up the voter rolls, so making sure they have all the tools they need to do that job, and do it properly, is very important to us.”

Mississippi’s Congressional Primaries are in about 3 weeks – on June 7th