DeKalb County will receive another multimillion grant to help with elections.
County commissioners approved Tuesday a new $4.6 million grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a national nonprofit that works to help elections offices modernize their operations. The group — which has backing from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, among others — awarded DeKalb another grant worth $4.8 million prior to November’s general election.
The new grant comes with early voting already underway for Jan. 5′s high stakes U.S. Senate runoffs.
“This will help with the things that we need to make sure that the voting experience in DeKalb County is safe, secure and flows,” District 3 Commissioner Larry Johnson said.
County officials have said previous grant money was used to pay for things like increased staffing, more equipment and personal protective equipment. Officials have also said that the money will help DeKalb “build a state-of-the-art voter registration and election system” moving forward.
DeKalb COO Zach Williams said Tuesday that a lot of the new grant would be “focused on expanding voter education and outreach efforts, and really promoting early voting and avoiding crowds wherever possible.”
Advance in-person voting started Monday at a dozen locations in DeKalb. A 13th location — at Agnes Scott College in Decatur — opens Dec. 21. View the full schedule below.
The county also has more than 30 dropboxes available for those who choose to vote by absentee ballot. The list below includes all but four new dropbox locations that went live on Monday.
The new boxes are located at: the Stonecrest Library at 3123 Klondike Road in Lithonia; the DeKalb-Atlanta Senior Center at 25 Warren Street SE in Atlanta; the North DeKalb Senior Center at 3393 Malone Drive in Chamblee; and the South DeKalb Senior Center at 1931 Candler Road in Decatur.
ADVANCE VOTING LOCATIONS AND SCHEDULE:
ABSENTEE BALLOT DROPBOX LOCATIONS:
