Voter turnout is decreasing in Aberdeen

ABERDEEN, Miss. (WCBI)-  Aberdeen has held four elections this year. The latest, a special election for a new chief of police. Some people in Aberdeen are eager to see a new face in the police chief seat, but others didn’t bother to go out and vote. One-third of the municipal election commission, Jennifer Rollison, said people are tired of voting in the city.

“I’m looking for honesty and fair that’s all I ask. I know he’s going to be respectable because he’s going for the job,” said resident Annaliza Kyles.

“I’m looking for someone who will help to keep the city safe and I voted for the one that the previous chief of police and I respected him because he had integrity so that’s what I’m looking for integrity,” said resident Judy Lawrence.

People want different characteristics in their next police chief person that will replace late police chief Henry Randle. Rollison said preparing for elections is hard enough, but continually getting people out to vote is an even bigger challenge.

“The turnout has been very slim this is our fourth election and it being right after a holiday makes it kind of hard. Every election is different you always start off with your hiccups and things smooth out but we started off with the mayor and then we had the ward 1 re-election and now we have the police chief it’s just a lot of work that goes into elections,” said Rollison.

Some voters were out of town on election day, meaning the results may not be final right away.

“We still have to wait five days for the absentee ballots to come in and to process those,” said Rollison.

If one of the four candidates for police chief gets 50% plus one vote they’ll be sworn in immediately; if not, then the two candidates with the most votes will go into a runoff on July 27, 2021.

“We have 132 absentee ballots. They will have to go through them and make sure the application is filled out correctly and they will either accept it or reject it,” said Rollison.

The commission said they are thankful for each of the poll workers for dedicating their time for each of the elections.