(Little Rock, KATV) — As next week’s big Election Day approaches, Entergy Arkansas is working with business leaders and local officials to ensure reliable power to polling places.

Although Entergy, as well as the National Board of Election Commissioners, say that while they don’t anticipate any problems, they want to be proactive in making the public voting process quick and efficient.

“What we have done at Entergy Arkansas is simply work proactively with local officials and county clerks to ensure reliable power is ready for use at all polling locations,” said Heather Kendrick, Entergy Arkansas communications specialist.

“Working with our Entergy groups or our power companies to make sure that we restore power to those locations. It’s part of that pre-coordination of who should I call. Who should I email ?And so I think we’re in a really good position,” said Chris Madison, director of the State Board of Election Commissioners.

They do what they can to ensure that participating in democracy is an enjoyable and safe experience by reducing facility issues, security concerns and interruptions to the voting process.

“Really even on a basic level. So if you or I, you know, go vote or go to any event, if the lights go out, even if it’s daylight when you can see, it’s a little disconcerting.” Entergy Arkansas communications specialist Heather Kendrick said.

Entergy says they are preparing for Election Day like they would for a major storm or large-scale national event: preparing crews and even suspending maintenance work near polling locations for Election Day .

“We ensure that our teams are adequately staffed. We ensure that people are distributed throughout the service territory so that if an unforeseen outage occurs, it does not delay people arriving on site. locations. We have people spread across the territory and ready to help if needed,” Kendrick said.

Both organizations say that even if problems are not anticipated and polling places have backup options, they must still account for unforeseen circumstances.

“This has been a real breakthrough that we’ve encouraged from our national partners to collaborate with their local partners on this and everything I’ve heard about it has been positive,” Madison said.

“The counties that I’ve spoken with that have asked about this have said they agree. When you have power outages, they have to triage and this is happening: hospitals, 911 centers and polling stations.”

“Because it’s a really big day and there’s going to be a lot of traffic and a lot of people, we just want to make sure that on our end we’ve done everything we can to make sure this day is voted on in the elections of 2024. to make this go as smoothly as possible,” Kendrick said.

Entergy Arkansas says they are joining officials in encouraging the public to remain vigilant and report if they notice anything suspicious at polling locations.

Election day will take place on Tuesday, November 5.