The Chatham County Board of Elections has a new supervisor.
She is Brook Schreiner, who comes to Chatham from Butts County, where she served as director of elections and registration for five years. Prior to that, she held the same position in Henry County for 10 years.
Chosen by the county’s five-member election board from a field of eight applicants, Schreiner succeeds Billy Wooten, who has staffed Chatham County elections since 1998 and has held the top job since 2020. He had been expected to step away from the job before next year’s midterm elections.
Schreiner will officially assume her new post on Feb. 2, according to a statement issued by the board Monday, taking over the day-to-day operations of an elections office of a county where the number of registered voters has soared to more than 232,300, up from some 155,300 in 2016 and 200,300 in 2020.
By comparison, Butts County, where she most recently worked as elections supervisor, reported 17,559 registered voters in last year’s general election.
Schreiner will take charge just months ahead of hotly contested party primaries on May 19, followed by almost certain primary runoffs in June and the general election in November — all amid continued challenges by self-described election integrity groups to the state’s voting system and the results of 2020 elections in Georgia.
Changes are also coming to the county election board, to which Schreiner answers. Its four partisan seats — two Republicans and two Democrats — will be contested in the May balloting. Once seated in January 2027, the new board is expected to name a successor to current chairman Thomas Mahoney III, who has indicated his current term will be his last.
In the statement issued by the board announcing her hiring, Schreiner said her primary goal “is to ensure every eligible voter has full confidence in the integrity and accessibility of our election process.”
“I look forward to working closely with the Board and the dedicated staff to uphold transparency and professionalism in all our operations as we prepare for the upcoming election cycle.”