Colleagues,
So many of you did so much to help our candidates get elected President and Vice-President. I saw so much energy, particularly between Atlanta and Chatham, and certainly on the ground here in Chatham. Young progressives, older folk, and in between all working, volunteering, and giving what they could. How exciting, refreshing, and invigorating.
Still I wanted to take time to tell the members of the CCDC what an outstanding job your Chair Jay Jones did. I was actively involved in getting 9 additional drop boxes (which collected more than all the absentee ballots cast in 2016). Liberty City’s was overflowing. I also was involved with the GOTV trolley effort to give voters rides to the polls.
The DPG asked me to be one of Chatham’s legal liaisons and that morphed into helping individually contact every single absentee voter whose outer envelope had some error and was initially rejected. We helped cure more than half of those errors and get those votes to count.
But I am not writing this note to talk about me. I just wanted you to know the basis for my knowledge of what your chair did.
Jay Jones (as did Adot Whitely) helped the drop box group identify locations and insure we recommended sites that were most beneficial to the voters. Jay worked with the trolley committee to help draw routes and identify where most voters could benefit. And every single week Jay received the list of “rejected” absentee ballots, used Dem party software to identify likely Dem voters, added their phone numbers, and enabled us to call every single one. He also helped organize the committee of 12 that made the calls.
This was in addition to working as a roving poll watcher, responding to questions from other poll watchers, fielding and routing hundreds of calls from volunteers, the DPG, and the Biden campaign. And, when the votes were being counted, Jay was there to watch the “adjudication” of ballots spit out by the scanners, while the Republicans were filing lawsuits. Being a leader is tough. You make enemies and garner criticism every time you make a decision. So, undoubtedly there are those who may still harbor their feelings over a past disagreement. On top of that it is never fun to lose an election. After the Commission Chair primary, Jay could have said he had done his share and concentrated solely on personal matters. But I gotta tell you, your chair was magnificent during this election. I wanted to say this in writing and I wanted to say it to you. Jay deserves credit for what he did. BRAVO! Very well done!! Thank you, Jay Jones.
Tony Center
Past Chatham County Commissioner
Past Chatham County Democratic Committee Chair