Longtime Monroe County Elections Supervisor Kaye Warren has decided to retire effective Aug. 7, and her trusted assistant, April Dumas, has been tapped to take her place.
Warren said she decided earlier this summer that it was time to retire to become a full-time grandma to her new five-month-old granddaughter Wrenley. Warren plans to live in Statesboro during the week where she will take over babysitting duties while Warren’s son, Heath, and daughter-in-law, Massey, work during the day. Wrenley is Warren’s first grandchild.
Warren said she regrets only getting to work in the new Elections headquarters on Holiday Circle for about seven months but said she’s excited about her grandmother duties.
“I’ve been wanting one for a long time,” Warren said of her granddaughter. “I only had one son, and I always wanted more children.”
Warren has worked for Monroe County for the past 15 years. She was hired by then Monroe County Probate Judge Karen Pitman and Monroe County Tax Commissioner Lori Andrews to assist with elections following a controversial 2011 Forsyth mayoral race in which fraudulent absentee ballots resulted in an inquiry by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
After years of election duties being shared between the Probate Judge’s office and the Tax Commissioners’ office, Monroe County Commissioners decided in 2017 to create a five-member Board of Elections and Registrations to run all elections, including early voting, for Monroe County, the City of Forsyth and the City of Culloden. Warren was then promoted by the new Board of Elections as the county’s Elections Supervisor, and Dumas, who has worked with county elections since 2012, was promoted to the title of Assistant Elections Supervisor.
While Warren didn’t have a background in elections prior to working for Monroe County, she had a longtime interest in local and state politics. That interest was sparked by the election of her aunt, Janice Horton, to Georgia State Senate District 17 in 1979, a position Horton held for the next eight years.
“I used to go campaign with her (Horton) when I was a teenager,” Warren recalled. “She was just always talking to all these people, and it just amazed me. I used to go see her at the Capitol when she was there.”
Warren’s first full-time job experience came when she operated her father Billy Shiver’s convenience store on North Lee Street known as “Big Billy’s Exxon.” Warren ran the store for 17 years until her mother, Barbara Shiver, passed away and her father died shortly thereafter. Warren then attended nursing school and became a home healthcare nurse out of Gray for about 10 years.
“When I was a nurse, I stayed nervous all the time,” Warren said. “When people die, you cry. It was emotional. . . Nursing just wasn’t for me. I was too sensitive. I never did get used to it.”
Warren said when her friend Pitman called her and told her she needed help with running the county’s elections, she jumped at the chance to work for Monroe County. She said she never regretted the unlikely career move.
“I have enjoyed working for the county,” Warren said. “It’s been very good to me. Out of all my jobs, I loved this one the most. And I love the people.”
Warren said she has developed close relationships with the county’s five Board of Elections members: Rosalyn Harbuck, Linda Davis, Mary Chambliss, Samuel Bennett, and Jimmy Zellner, the many volunteer poll workers that the Board of Elections oversees, as well as with her officemate, Dumas.
Warren said of Dumas: “She calls us the dynamic duo. We’ve been together a long time. We go to conferences together and stuff. And we talk with other counties. We’ve got a lot of friends in other counties.”
Warren said one of the toughest times for the Elections Office over the past nine years was in 2020 when the state mandated new voting machines. She said frequent open records requests and social media criticism regarding the election process have been other challenges.
Overall though, Warren said her experience as elections supervisor has been a positive one. She said she took pride in organizing the county’s new elections office and the responsibilities have only grown over time. She said there were only about 16,000 registered voters in Monroe County when she took over as elections supervisor in 2017 and there are over 24,000 registered voters now.
Warren said, “The most rewarding part of the job is the relief on Election Night after everything comes out good, when the election went good with no hiccups. When nobody is complaining and everybody is happy. It’s like you accomplished what you set out to accomplish. It’s like a rush really”
Monroe County Board of Elections Chairperson Rosalyn Harbuck said Warren’s steady presence will be missed in the county’s Elections Office.
“She’s been here since the day we started,” Harbuck said of Warren. “She’s been here through thick and thin.”
The Board of Elections decided at a meeting on Monday, July 27 to promote Dumas, who has also been with the county’s Elections Office since virtually the beginning. Harbuck said Dumas is the clear and obvious choice to assume the reins as Warren’s replacement.
“She’s been here through thick and thin too,” Harbuck said of Dumas. “It would be foolish of us to waste that talent.”
Warren agreed that Dumas is the perfect choice to fill her shoes.
“April will do a great job,” she said. “She’s been a great asset to me.”
As for Warren’s immediate future, she’ll begin her frequent commutes to Statesboro for babysitting duties for at least the next two years until her husband of 38 years, Jeff, retires from his job as Network Services Manager at AT&T. After that, she plans to travel the world alongside Jeff, visiting American landmarks like the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls and maybe even popular foreign countries like Italy and New Zealand.
Following the July 27th Board of Elections meeting, members of the elections board and a handful of Monroe County’s volunteer poll workers held a retirement reception at the Board of Elections’ office in Warren’s honor. The Monroe County Board of Commissioners also plans to honor Warren’s years of dedicated service at their next scheduled meeting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 4.
