Vicksburg Warren School District officials voiced support for taking school board elections off paper ballots by changing the qualifying period for seats on the five-person Board of Trustees.

Currently, potential candidates are given two months to qualify for school board races locally — a longer qualifying period than in most Mississippi counties, the result of a hodgepodge of state laws following the consolidation of city and county districts in the state.

Since the switch to touch-screen voting in 2006 in most counties, electronic ballot cards and absentee ballots from the Secretary of State’s Office have been sent to counties by mid-September, when qualifying papers here are still being accepted. As a result, votes in contested school board races this year and in 2008 were taken on paper ballots.

Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Duran Swinford and District 1 Trustee Jerry Boland, who lost his re-election bid to Bryan Pratt last month, told a group of Vicksburg and Warren County public officials Monday it is time to change course. State lawmakers have said a joint resolution of support between the city, county and schools to persuade the Legislature to insert changes geared to Warren County into state elections laws would remedy the situation.

“We’ve got to get away from the paper ballots,” Boland said, citing such problems as ballot availability and lessened perceptions of privacy he said he’s heard since Election Day.

“It hurt me — when I say hurt, I’m not talking about because I didn’t get re-elected, that’s not what I’m talking about — it bothered me the people that put us in office felt like their voice was not fairly calculated,” he said.

In most counties, qualifying periods start in early August and end in early September, with state law stipulating runoffs when no majority winner emerges. Boland said shortening the qualifying period by just 15 days might be enough to get names on the electronic cards along with the rest of the ballot, to which Swinford agreed in principle. She said board attorney Briggs Hopson III, also Warren County’s state senator, would draft the resolution for the school board.

No decision was discussed on whether the number of signatures needed on qualifying papers, currently 150, should change. Whether specifics to allow for runoffs in multi-candidate races should be included was not mentioned.

“We really should be moving in that direction,” Swinford said, noting even another 15 days could ensure candidates’ names will be on electronic ballot cards used for all the other contests. “As long as with those 15 days, the name can be printed on the ballot, because that’s the ultimate goal — to get the name on the ballot,” she said.

School officials came out for the concept during a session over breakfast at Courtyard by Marriott hotel, the second such powwow of local politicos since October and the first to include the school board. Trustees Boland, Zelmarine Murphy and Jim Stirgus Jr. attended.

All five county supervisors and two-thirds of the city board — Mayor Paul Winfield and North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield — attended Monday’s dutch-treat morning meal. The hotel donated the meeting space, District 4 Supervisor and meeting organizer Bill Lauderdale said.

Pratt defeated Boland with nearly 57 percent of the vote in the Nov. 2 general election to represent northeast Warren County on the board. Sally Bullard was elected without opposition to represent the southeastern District 5, where Tommy Shelton didn’t seek another term. School board members are elected to six-year, staggered terms.

The school board meets monthly, setting policy and overseeing the district supervisor.