By Matt de Simone
Botetourt County’s departments consist of hardworking, driven, and accomplished employees who continue to make Botetourt a wonderful place to live.
Clark is a Lord Botetourt High School graduate who grew up in Cloverdale. She’s worked for Botetourt County on three different occasions. She started out as a switchboard operator at the courthouse and secretary to the Service Authority when she was a senior in high school.
She returned a few years later to work in the Purchasing Department for the county as the assistant purchasing manager before leaving after six years on the job.
“When I left in 2001, I stayed friends with everybody,” Clark remembered. “We would meet up every so often to have lunch. I told them, ‘You just wait, I’m going to come back.’”
A few years later, Clark inquired about an available position as the Botetourt County General Registrar. Today, Clark and her staff are responsible for maintaining the county’s voter rolls. On a daily basis, voter changes or registrations come through electronically. Her staff processes those changes and goes through and update and verify information about new and former voters. They also “play detective” by sending out “Where are you?” letters to keep the rolls up to date.
Clark’s responsibilities consist of creating the forms sent to voter precincts, supplies, programming and verifying the equipment before every election, and recruiting and training election officers. Over the last couple of years, Clark’s learned more about cybersecurity.
“In the first two or three years (after I became the Registrar in 2015), when we would see a voting application, we would process it once,” Clark explained. “Process it and file it—it’s gone. Now, the way legislation has changed, we might touch that application three or four times before we’re actually finished with it because of everything we have to check now.”
Absentee voting is another change Clark’s experienced in the past couple of years as Registrar. In 2020, the first day of absentee voting saw the office mailed out over 2,000 ballots on the very first day of absentee voting, which was more than the entire ballots sent out for the 2016 presidential election.
She enjoys her time working for Botetourt County for the better part of the last 20 years.
“I love it,” Clark admitted. “I came back.”
Clark spends her spare time with her high school sweetheart. Together, they have a son who lives in Blue Ridge and daughter and son-in-law in Eagle Rock who have two daughters. Clark also has four black cats and a dog.
“I enjoy time with my family, especially the grandkids,” Clark said. “I love cooking, baking, using my creative talents for weddings, parties, etc. and watching sports.”
For more information on what the Botetourt County Department of Elections & Voter Registration Office is up to, visit https://www.botetourtva.gov/403/Department-of-Elections-Voter-Registrati.
