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After serving in an interim role for a couple of months, Michelle Allcon is now the permanent Smith County elections administrator, County Judge Nathaniel Moran announced Thursday.

Allcon, who was elections coordinator for Erath County, was chosen as interim administrator on May 6 after the Smith County Election Commission accepted the resignation of former Smith County Elections Administrator Denise Hernandez.

“As a result of the performance of Ms. Allcon today as the interim elections administrator for the past few months, the commission will no longer search for another elections administrator going forward,” Moran said at the Smith County Elections Commission meeting. “We are pleased that Ms. Allcon’s status will no longer be interim and she will become our permanent elections administrator.”

Moran said Edna Morris, a long-time elections employee, is anticipated to become the chief deputy for the elections office in the near future.

Allcon also gave a brief presentation during the meeting about the operations at the elections office.

The acronym S.A.L.T, which stands for secure, accurate, legal and transparent elections, sums up the goals of the Smith County election administration, she said.

Examples of being successful in this goal are physical and cybersecurity for elections equipment and databases, accurate maps and voter registration data, and being transparent with voters in how they go through the data, Allcon said.

For the fiscal year 2021, the elections administration was over budget. Allcon said she realized there wasn’t enough in the budget to cover the pre-election for November soon after being hired, leading her to have to ask for additional funding to prepare for the upcoming election.

Right after asking for more funds to cover these expenses, she also received inquiries about three invoices that had not been made. One was from the November 2020 election and the others from the May election.

“Things needed to be a little cleaned up, and hopefully we will be able to improve this next fiscal year and not go over budget,” Allcon said.

As far as the fiscal year 2022 budget, changes have already been submitted, she said. Most costs are not changing, but a little more pay was requested for temporary election workers in light of possible changes to election laws and the delta variant of COVID-19.

Another update from the elections office is the redistricting process this year. Smith County has hired a geographical information systems manager, Philip Burkhart, to be sure all data collected is accurate.

They will start redistricting on the school level and the emergency services level, Allcon said.

So far 22 districts have been contacted, 13 of which confirmed the maps are correct, she said. They are waiting to hear back from two regarding changes that were made, three have asked questions but not yet given confirmation and four have not yet responded at all.

“After we hear from the offices and know the map boundaries are accurate, I take that data and then go through our voter registration database street by street, data point by data point, address by address to make sure that it is entered into voter registration correctly,” Allcon said.

The elections office is also currently undergoing construction. Changes will include a newly installed wall to create an election room, better storage for equipment and elections records, a secure mail ballot room and windows for transparency when counting ballots and other items.