New team helps election run smoothly in Clarion County

A new team orchestrated election day in Clarion County. Pictured are election assistants Laura O’Neil and Robert Wilk and interim election director Cindy Callihan. (By Randy Bartley)

Voters may not have noticed, but there was a new team working behind the scenes Tuesday in Clarion County for the general election.

“We had a whole new crew of county employees coming in at seven in the morning, something we don’t normally do until 1 p.m.,” Cindy Callihan, the county’s longtime director of elections, said at Wednesday’s county commissioners meeting.

“I feel we were very well organized,” added Callihan, who is now serving as the interim director of elections.

“On election day we get flooded with calls from voters asking where they can vote and what the changes were this year. We had a lot of calls because we had a lot of voter turnout,” Callihan said.

The voter turnout in the county Tuesday was about 65.5 percent, Callihan said.

“That’s pretty good for what I call a mini-presidential election. This election went a little sky high for us,” she said.

Callihan said the official count will begin Monday.

“I enjoyed the election,” said Laura O’Neil, one of the new election assistants. “There is a lot of build-up to the election and it was satisfying to see it go as planned.”

“I liked to see the end result of all the work we put into it,” said Robert Wilk, another of the new election assistants.

“These two have learned a great deal in a short amount of time,” said commissioner Wayne Brosius. “They were answering phone calls yesterday and they had all the answers.”

 

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