Charlotte Sosbee is the director of elections and voter registration for the Athens-Clarke County Government, working in her second presidential election as director in November 2024.

Q: What goes into preparing for an election?

We maintain the three divisions in our department. One division is voter registration, to maintain our voter list. That requires maintenance where we delete voters that need to be deleted and add voters that need to be added.

Then we have the elections division of our office, which consists of the poll worker training, testing our voting equipment, the security of our equipment, the risk-limiting audit, and the tabulation of our votes.

Then we have the final division, which I refer to as our absentee and open records division, where we process all absentee ballots and applications. We receive applications from voters overseas in our military, disabled and elderly voters, voters who will be out of town, and even voters who just want to vote absentee for no reason.

Q: Did you notice any changes after President Joe Biden dropped the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic candidate?

I did notice that we got a lot of calls after that announcement where voters, to me, were a little more excited about voting. Prior to that, we would have calls from voters who were saying they didn’t know if they wanted to vote anymore because they didn’t specifically like either candidate. I don’t know if that’s voters who are for either of those candidates, but I think it’s a little more exciting. The phones were ringing off the hook.

Q: Why should voters be excited to vote this year?

Just voting, period. Everybody should be excited, regardless of how old you are. Voting should be taken seriously. It’s sacred. It’s your voice on whether it be any issues, whether it’s for a specific race or office. It’s your voice, and that should not be taken from anybody. That’s why I’m delicate about it, I handle my voter registration list very delicately.

We’re not removing anybody unless we have documentation to show that we need to remove somebody. The right to register to vote should not be taken lightly. So hearing calls gets me just as excited.

And that’s one thing that I love about this job, is I’m affording each person who wants to vote, who is registered to vote, the opportunity to exercise their voice.

Q: What do you hope to see in your future and the future of the office?

I hope that we get more involved with the community and increase the integrity of our voting system and our voting and elections itself. I feel we need to do that as election officials. It’s our job to do that, to tell our story and to continue to show what we do is accurate and fair.

That’s my hope for elections. For me, I’m hoping someday that I’ll be retiring and working as a poll worker. I may even run for election one day, I don’t know.

Comments trimmed for length and clarity.

Kyle Tatelbaum is journalism major with a Spanish minor and certificate in sports media covering city and county government.