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Registration deadline less than a week away
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Crissie Elric
Bryan County News
Updated: Oct 6, 2011, 4:00 PM
Published: Oct 5, 2011, 3:31 PM

The countywide special election and municipal elections are still about a month away, but the deadline for voter registration is just around the corner.
Tuesday is the official deadline to register, and voter registration forms must be submitted or postmarked by the end of business Oct. 11, Bryan County Chief Registrar Warren Miller said.
Registration forms can be found at the Voter Registration Office in the county courthouse or at City Hall in Pembroke, as well as the County Administrative Complex and City Hall in Richmond Hill. The Richmond Hill and Pembroke public libraries also have registration forms, or they can be found online at www.sos.state.ga.us.
Anyone registering to vote must show proof of U.S. citizenship, residency of Georgia and residency in the county in which they wish to cast a ballot. Those wishing to register must also be at least 17 and one half years of age and cannot be serving any sentence imposed by the conviction of a felony involving moral turpitude and cannot have been found mentally incompetent.
Miller said the registration form has instructions, but that a name, physical address and birth date are required on the form. He also said full Social Security numbers are no longer required, just the last four digits or a driver’s license number.
If a resident is registering for the first time by mail, Warren said, they must provide a photo ID or information that shows their name and address. He cited a copy of an electric bill as an example.
In order to vote, residents must present a form of photo identification, including a Georgia driver’s license, valid U.S. passport, valid U.S. military photo ID, valid tribal photo ID or a valid state or federal government issued photo ID, including a free voter ID card issued by the county registrar’s office or Department of Driver Services.
To register for an absentee ballot, Warren said residents can go to the Voter Registration Office, or find an application on the Secretary of State’s website at www.sos.ga.gov.
Other registration information:
• Richmond Hill currently has about 1,500 registered voters, while Pembroke has around 6,300. Check voter registration status and determine voter precinct by visiting the Secretary of State’s “My Voter Page” at www.sos.ga.gov/mvp.
• Registration forms should be mailed to the Bryan County Voter Registration Office at P.O. Box 1526, Pembroke, Ga., 31321, or to the Secretary of State’s office at Elections Division, 802 Floyd West Tower, 2 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. SE, Atlanta, Ga. 30334.

Dates and details:
• Voter registration deadline is Tuesday.
• Early voting is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday, Oct. 18-Nov. 4 at the Voter Registration Office in Pembroke or the County Administrative Complex in Richmond Hill.
• For Election Day on Nov. 8, voters can cast ballots for municipal races in Pembroke at City Hall or for Richmond Hill at City Hall and the John W. Stevens Wetlands Education Center in J.F. Gregory Park. To vote in the countywide special election, voters must go to their regular precincts. The two elections are separate, Warren noted.
• For a complete list of Bryan County voter precincts, please visit www.bryancountyga.org/departments/voting/polling_places.php.
For more information, call the Voter Registration Office at 653-3859.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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