One of my favorite comments is “Quit cutting funds for voting.” When city clerk Lorie Hogstad presented this survey at the informational meeting, she mentioned that ‘saving money’ is one of their reasons for using vote centers.
I find this ironic, for a number of reasons. The city found NO problem with spending $46,000 on indoor pool drawings that had NOTHING to do with the actual ballot language, but now all of a sudden they are concerned about ‘saving money’. Unbelievable.
There should be NO worries about saving money on elections. We should stay with using all the precincts. They are more convenient and more reliable (you don’t have to worry about having multiple ballots in stock). Wait times are shorter. Vote centers are a similar to a poll tax, because if you don’t live close to one, you have to arrange transportation to get to them. There is currently a lawsuit in North Dakota the ACLU of the Dakotas is taking up on vote centers and advocational videos there, if they are successful, hopefully they bring the lawsuit to the South.
I also find the comments about the ease of voting and the public knowing the issues a bit disheartening with all the under votes during this election. What makes the vote center usage even more troubling is the lack of consistency in elections;
In recent city and school board elections, Sioux Falls voters have been able to cast their ballot from any one of 13 polling places in the city.
In next month’s primary election, though, voters again will have to find their home polling stations.
Keeping the precincts in ALL elections would stop the confusion voters have. But according to Erpenbach, everything went swimmingly;
Councilor Michelle Erpenbach said the city election was well-run, even with the new vote centers.
“The point of the story is that change is hard,” she said.
Yeah, easy for Michelle to say, she won by 60%. Also, I would agree, change is hard when you change the polling places and method of voting every single time there is an election. I gave up years ago because of this confusion, and just absentee vote at the county administration building. It would be different if we used the vote centers for every single election and have been doing it for several years, then I would totally agree, people need to get it by now. The mass confusion comes from this musical chair polling places every time there is an election. It’s time the city, the school district, the county and the state put their heads together and agreed on how every election will be done. I took this up with former city clerk Debra Owen, and I think she was working on a solution . . . well, we now how that went.
Anybody who claims this election went well is in a state of denial. There were mistakes and misleading language on the ballot, the tabulation was difficult, the vote centers confused people, the lack of an informed public (the undervotes) and the almost million dollars poured into the zoning campaign from Walmart, should concern us.
It’s time we end the vote centers and go back to precincts in EVERY election.