Promising Directions - Mississippi

It’s Not Only WHAT You Know, But It’s Also WHO You Know That Gets Results

The LIFE of Mississippi Annual Conference on March 17-18, 2008, focused on access, particularly voting access. Christine Woodell presented a break-out session on the importance of voting and what to do if you arrive at your voting place and find that it is inaccessible. The keynote speaker at the luncheon was the new Secretary of State, Mr. Delbert Housemann and his topic was "Voting - It's your Right and Responsibility.”  It’s likely that Delbert Hosemann would have accepted the invitation anyway, but, as LIFE’s Director, Christy Dunaway notes, “Delbert lives across the street from my Mom, and I have known him for 20 years, so I'm comfortable in saying that we will have a very good working relationship with his office to address any accessibility issues related to voting.”

Among the issues Mr. Hosemann was asked to address were his plans to ensure accessible voting in Mississippi and work with LIFE to train his poll workers on the new accessible voting machines. Every precinct now has them, however, poll workers often are not familiar with them and can't find the headphones or don't realize they are portable and can be removed from the stand and placed in someone's lap or lap tray, etc.