Meridian City Hall

City of Meridian officials are considering managing the upcoming municipal elections in-house, rather than using the services of the Lauderdale County Election Commission. 

At Tuesday’s city council meeting, the city plans to ask the council to allow Election Systems & Software (ESS), to manage the May 2 municipal elections as a means of saving taxpayer money. The Lauderdale County Election Commission oversaw previous municipal elections. 

“ESS, our finance department and five election commissioners have been trying to oversee elections,” Meridian Mayor Percy Bland said. ” As an administration, we feel ESS, our finance department and five election commissioners will do a good job. We just handled the Food and Beverage Tax special election (in August). Going forward, we believe that ESS and our finance department team can oversee the municipal election compared to the prices that we paid in the past (to the county). We are doing it as a cost-saving measure.”

The city will pay ESS $50,927 to oversee the municipal election. For the 2013 municipal election, the city paid the Lauderdale County Election Commission $24,414, which did not include rental fees for county voting machines.

Chief Administrative Officer Richie McAlister said the city will receive various services from ESS.

“The price includes voter access cards, encoders, headphones, laptop rentals with GEMS Database support. Instead of paying the county $30,000 for poll worker training, we can do all of that in-house,” McAlister said. “The whole deal is to create autonomy. Our City Clerk, David Whitaker, and his staff trained at Meridian Community College and certified by the Secretary of State’s office to run and oversee municipal elections.” 

McAlister said if the council wants the county to supervise the election, the city will still have to contract with ESS.

“If the council decides to go with the county for this election, we will still have to contract out with ES&S for the $18,000 that we need for software and the GEMS Database Support,” McAlister said. “The city would be paying the Lauderdale County Election Commission for a service that we can provide by utilizing the Finance and Records Team and the City of Meridian Municipal Election Commission.”

Bland said he is confident ESS can handle the assignment.

“No one has ever looked at the city handling the election. (McAlister) did a cost comparison study and he said it is something we should move forward with. We believe ESS will do a good job running this election,” Bland said.

Party primaries in the election are May 2, with a runoff, if necessary, May 16. The general election is June 16.