If your calendar for Sat. Sept. 21 is empty, now you have a great option.
You can spend most of your day at government plaza–or watching on FB or streaming–the Caddo Commission interview 20 candidates for the Caddo registrar of voters.
Starting at 9 am
Yes—twenty, as in 20, as in a bunch–of candidates.
The interviews are limited to thirty, as in 30, minutes for each candidate. So, in theory, this process could entail 10 hours. Or longer depending on bathroom and snacks breaks for the commissioners. Presumably they will have box lunches while interviewing?
And that’s before the voting process begins. Whew–better bring snacks, your lunch and maybe supper–if you plan on watching the interviews up close and personal at 500 Travis Street.
The meeting is open to the public.
The candidates will not be allowed to hear interviews prior to their own interrogation. Thus, in theory, they all go into the commission chambers "cold turkey"
as to interview questions, etc.
The established procedure is to ask all the candidates the same 4 questions. Now how these will be kept secret to the world after the first interview is the $64 question.
The candidates will be interviewed in alphabetical order. That means Charles Allum leads off and Charles Tayor III ends the parade.
Rumor has it that one or more candidates who submitted an application would rather watch football, go to their kid’s Sat. events, or just go fishing and not show.
After the interviews are completed, the commission will vote on each candidate in the order of interviews. Each of the 12 commissioners (assuming all show for the Sat. fun day) only gets one vote for any of the candidates.
Thus, the first candidate to get a majority vote of the commissioners present will get the job. It is expected that it will take several rounds of voting to get down to a majority vote.
It is not a requirement that the commissioners be in attendance for all the interviews. But they can only vote in person. So check the area team football schedules to get an idea of a projected finish time for the interviews and the votes.
Many commissioners wanted to have the interviews set for two consecutive work days. One reason was the expected additional cost to the commission of $2000 to $3000 to open government plaza, have security, pay hourly employees, etc.
Other commissioners wanted to knock out all the interviews on a non-business working day. The vote for the Saturday interview marathon was 6-5.
The registrar appointment is for life. The starting salary set by state law is $83,000 plus.