Some new faces in elected offices won’t be the only change coming in the 2022 election cycle.

Warren County Clerk Lynette Yates revealed Thursday that a plan is in place for the May primary and November general election that will be a departure from pre-pandemic voting and somewhat similar to the emergency voting regulations put in place in 2020.

“We’ve submitted our plan, and it has been approved by the state,” Yates said. “We’re going with vote centers.”

The vote centers, a departure from the traditional precinct voting locations, are familiar because of their use in 2020 as a safety measure during the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2020, the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center was used for early voting and was one of six vote centers utilized throughout the county on Election Day.

This year, that plan is being tweaked a bit.

Legislation passed last year in the Kentucky General Assembly allows for the use of vote centers and for three days of early voting instead of the three weeks that were used in 2020.

In Warren County, those three days will be May 12, 13 and 14 – the Thursday, Friday and Saturday before Election Day – at five locations: Phil Moore Park, Ephram White Park, Buchanon Park, Living Hope Baptist Church and the county’s Sugar Maple Square property.

As with SKyPAC in 2020, the five vote centers will not be for specific precincts and instead will be open to all of the county’s registered voters.

Voting on Election Day – May 17 – will be “more specific,” Yates said, but exactly how the county’s 88 voting precincts will be divided among eight polling places that day is still being determined.

Yates said voting May 17 will take place at the five early voting locations plus Cumberland Trace Elementary School, Warren Central High School and the University of Kentucky cooperative extension building at 5162 Russellville Road.

The same early voting and Election Day venues will be used for November’s general election.

Going to vote centers wasn’t mandated by the state legislature but allowed by voting reform legislation passed last year.

Yates said many smaller counties are opting to continue with traditional precinct voting. That wasn’t an attractive option for Warren County, which had 49 polling places (some with more than one precinct) before the pandemic.

“For us, logistically, it’s better to go with vote centers,” Yates said. “The bigger counties are pretty much all going with vote centers. We’re trying to make it easier for the public.”

Yates was also encouraged by how well early voting and vote centers worked in 2020.

In the November 2020 election, Warren County had 55,762 ballots cast out of 89,576 registered voters for a 62.25% voter turnout, better than the statewide turnout of 60.33%.

“That’s a great turnout,” Yates said. “The emergency plan in 2020 worked great.”

Warren County voters will also be casting their ballots on some new equipment this year.

With most of the cost being covered by a $570,360 grant through the Center for Tech and Civic Life, Yates was able to purchase Verity Scan equipment from the Harp Enterprises election sales and service company to replace machines that had been in use for more than a decade.

The Verity Scan machines won’t be a huge departure from what voters are accustomed to, Yates said.

“It’s still paper-ballot machines, they’re just newer,” she said. “We were beginning to have problems with the old equipment.”

Yates said another election-related item, reapportionment of county magistrate districts, will likely not have to be dealt with this year.

Reapportionment based on population shifts within the county was supposed to be completed by May 1, but legislation to push it back to 2023 has passed the House and is making its way through the Senate.

– Follow business reporter Don Sergent on Twitter @BGDNbusiness or visit bgdailynews.com.