Lauderdale County elected officials have spent the better part of a year talking about adding a door to the circuit clerk’s new office space in the new Government Center and have yet to settle on a course of action.

This particular door is intended to give members of the public access to the circuit clerk’s office in the few particular instances their business cannot be conducted through the glass-protected service window, specifically for absentee voting.

The Board of Supervisors has two options on the table, one of which has the support of the circuit clerk but is opposed by the election commission, while the other has the support of the election commission but is roughly $20,000 more expensive. Both options will require adjustments in the building’s security plan.

Supervisors in August approved a change order moving forward with the cheaper option, but work has been put on hold while they reconsider their decision.

Regardless of how they decide, county supervisors are sure to leave someone deeply unhappy. Another solution, however, is to let voters decide which of the two plans is best. Instead of 11 elected officials — five supervisors, five election commissioners and the circuit clerk — taking months to act, perhaps Lauderdale County’s 40,000 plus active registered voters will have better luck navigating the political quagmire of office space allocation.

Lauderdale County voters are already set to head to the polls on Nov. 5 to vote in the presidential election, and an inquiry to the Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office found the board does have the authority to put non-binding resolutions on the ballot.

The only caveat is that the resolution must be added within 60 days of the election, giving the board a deadline of Friday, Sept. 6.

Adding the issue to the ballot would also provide a tangential benefit of additional election security as the two parties most invested in the outcome of the vote — the election commission and circuit clerk — are the same elected officials tasked with overseeing elections. It would be one of the most closely scrutinized elections in the state.

In a perfect world, the absentee voting issue would have been foreseen and avoided in the planning and construction of the new Government Center, but it was not, and the result is that our county supervisors are now in the non-enviable position of choosing between two unpopular options.

A decision, however, must be made, and if our elected officials can’t stomach the task, perhaps they should let the voters decide.