SPRINGFIELD — Effingham County’s voter roll is growing rapidly, making it necessary for its elections and registration office to follow suit.

Director of Elections and Registration Olivia Morgan described a proposed 3,000-square-foot addition to the metal building during the Feb. 8 meeting of the Effingham County Elections & Registration Board. It is located at 284 Ga. Hwy 119 South

“We’ll pretty much add another third to the building, or 30 percent to the building,” Morgan said. “I would think that would be able to accommodate us for quite some time.”

Plans call for the front of the building to be extended toward the highway.

“We don’t want to lose our beautiful parking lot next door and we have to maintain the back (of the building) because that’s where our loading and unloading of equipment is with our garage back there,” Morgan said. “My plan was to go toward the road the entire length of the building.”

The frontward expansion will open space in the middle and rear for equipment storage. 

“I would think that is almost doubling equipment room size,” Morgan said. “With redistricting, you know, we know Effingham is growing. More voters means more machines.

“It means me need more room to store more machines, which means we need more polling places more supplies for more polling places.”

The area in the front would be used for early voting, poll worker training and “anything on election night.”  

“It’ll be a huge multi-purpose room,” said Morgan, adding that it could be divided by partitions.

The new entrance will be on the left side facing the parking lot. A worker will be stationed just inside the door to help citizens.

Morgan said existing fixtures will be maintained in the new space and that partitions could be used to divide it 

“We are trying to do the least amount of changes to accommodate us at the least cost,” she said.

 Morgan has requested that $250,000 be budgeted for the expansion.