For those up set with the last vote

[deerman]

There will be an elections board meeting this Friday at 9:00am. My understanding is it is an open meeting to all residents of paulding county. Might not hurt for paulding.com to go and do an interview with questions from topics off pcom. Just letting everyone know...I will not monitor this thread or make replies to anyone. Not being mean...just did not start this topic for open discussion. Meeting is Friday...voice your opinions there...

[mei lan]

Oh, I've already voiced my opinion in writing, but I just may check this out as well.

[taylormade703@yahoo.com]

Will Paulette Braddock be there? She wouldn't make any public appearances or answer any quesions during the campaign.

[realtor]

There will be an elections board meeting this Friday at 9:00am. My understanding is it is an open meeting to all residents of paulding county. Might not hurt for paulding.com to go and do an interview with questions from topics off pcom. Just letting everyone know...I will not monitor this thread or make replies to anyone. Not being mean...just did not start this topic for open discussion. Meeting is Friday...voice your opinions there...

 

 

 

Why?

[taylormade703@yahoo.com]

Where is the meeting on Friday supposed to be?

Why?

[cherokeewoman]

So please expand what will this be about?

[gpatt0n]

If you watch the news, Diedra Holden talked about the reduction in the number of precincts and the resulting problems in terms of parking, etc. that were created, primarily in east Paulding.

 

pubby

[cherokeewoman]

I took the early voting route, and voted at Mt Tabor, I was in and out at 10 minutes... people need to pay more attention to these early voting places.... you have this right - they go for a week before the elections, if you take adavantage of it or not is also your right....

Each election you are offered early voting rights, you just need to take advantage...

[rednekkhikkchikk]

Shouldn't have to rush the decision on how to cast your vote just to avoid the extended wait times people experienced when they went to the polls on election day.

[Baileybleu]

Shouldn't have to rush the decision on how to cast your vote just to avoid the extended wait times people experienced when they went to the polls on election day.

 

 

I agree. What is the point of early voting. Just set up once and set it up right.

[surepip]

Shouldn't have to rush the decision on how to cast your vote just to avoid the extended wait times people experienced when they went to the polls on election day.

 

You can vote absentee, for any reason you want, and mail it the day before the election.

 

I believe the early voting was for 4 or 5 weeks.

 

 

EVERY county department was asked to cut their budget as much as possible, and come up with alternatives. Ms Holden did as requested, with the Election Board deciding how far to cut.

 

The possibly could have had more machines, and more ballot cards. But as far as having the number of polling places we had in the past, and the number of poll workers, I understand how, and why they cut back as much as they did.

 

I applaud Ms Holden for cutting back her budget as much as she did. I seem to recall in years past always waiting for a couple of hours to vote on election day. I would rather keep the Public Safety Departments fully staffed, and cut back on the other county services where ever possible even if it means waiting in line to get a tag or cast a ballot.

[FreeBird]

Pat, do you know any good reasons why an Internet type voting mechanism is not considered?

 

If you watch the news, Diedra Holden talked about the reduction in the number of precincts and the resulting problems in terms of parking, etc. that were created, primarily in east Paulding.

 

pubby

[mei lan]

I took the early voting route, and voted at Mt Tabor, I was in and out at 10 minutes... people need to pay more attention to these early voting places.... you have this right - they go for a week before the elections, if you take adavantage of it or not is also your right....

Each election you are offered early voting rights, you just need to take advantage...

 

Well, as I stated in the earlier vent thread(s), I don't want to vote too far in advance of an election in case something comes to light that might affect my vote. I've voted early before, but this time I couldn't vote the week before because I was out of town that week. So I said, well, after all, I'll just go on VOTING DAY.

 

I have no quarrel with the combining of the precincts, although parking would still have been messy. But the lines were due to having too few voting machines and too few ballot cards. At Russom, there were NINE voting machines, and nine or ten ballot cards, so that not only did I have to stand in line 2 1/2 hours just to get up to the voting area, after I got up there, I had to wait at the ballot card station for somebody to finish voting, hand their card to the poll worker, the poll worker to walk it over to the ballot card station, and then the people there program it.

 

I'm sorry - I've done poll work before, and this was the shabbiest thing I have EVER seen. There is NO EXCUSE for not having as many voting machines as physically possible for precincts. If they'd had plenty of machines, parking wouldn't have been as big an issue, either, because spaces would have turned over much more quickly.

 

I have no quarrel with waiting to vote, if it can't be helped. I've done it before, and I'd do it again. But to wait to vote because of STUPIDITY??? No. That is just not right. And my feelings aren't even primarily for me, although I was mightily pissed. I REALLY felt badly for those folks who were even more inconvenienced than I - those who weren't truly handicapped but have health issues, people with little kids (like the lady in front of me who had a 9-month-old), and people who had child care issues and may not have been able to go vote knowing they couldn't devote 2 1/2 hours.

 

And I will tell you that after standing on hard floors for 2 1/2 hours, my back is STILL bothering me, nine days later.

[gpatt0n]

Pat, do you know any good reasons why an Internet type voting mechanism is not considered?

Freebird:

 

the issues with Internet voting are that it throws too many variables into the mix.

 

First there is the party thing. The conventional wisdom is that smaller turnout typically benefits one party over another. This is obvious from the conflicts in the legislatures over voter identity laws (some of which have been disallowed by the courts) and pre-election efforts to remove unverified voters in places like Florida, as one party figures ways to expand participation (motor voter laws) and the other seeks to restrict participation. At the present time, I don't think Internet voting efforts would have a lot of political will behind it.

 

Second is the identity thing. There is no way to absolutely determine the identity of an Internet voter. Even if you had a thing like a standalone voter card with the persons fingerprint (good luck getting that national ID card to begin with), you couldn't prevent someone drugging their neighbors and 'stealing' their vote via the Internet.

 

Third, as it stands now, hacking for fun and profit is the third. The machines are not connected via the Internet although they are capable. At least it is my understanding that all the data is written to memory cards and physically transferred to the county's central vote counting center. The reason is that if they were connected to the net, they are, like any PC, capable of being hacked and having, for instance, a malicious program installed that takes a vote for candidate A and counts every second for that candidate and apply it to the Candidate B column. When you consider that those who wish to sway voters in an election like the last one actually spent $2.5 billion on advertising, you realize that if the voting machines were on a network, someone so interested might be tempted to spend a paltry $10 million to find an exploit and execute such malicious software to throw an election.

 

Throw in the idea that hackers from Pakistan, Iran, Eastern Europe, China and even India ... all of which would love to manipulate or confound the US electoral system and the temptation for issues like that are just too great.

 

pubby

[Sugail]

I for one would simply not vote if I had to stand in line, I can't stand for very long. That's why I went the Thursday before election day to Mt. Tabor and was in and out in no time.

[FreeBird]

I don't see why if I am a registered voter with a valid mailing address in the district a "voting card" with unique ID is mailed to me. I then use it to login and vote. It could only be used once. I have a PIN and all other types of information floating out there that I use to secure my identity. If somehow someone did hack my voter PIN and corresponding unique ID, then the vote would be removed.

[gpatt0n]

I don't see why if I am a registered voter with a valid mailing address in the district a "voting card" with unique ID is mailed to me. I then use it to login and vote. It could only be used once. I have a PIN and all other types of information floating out there that I use to secure my identity. If somehow someone did hack my voter PIN and corresponding unique ID, then the vote would be removed.

 

Oh I personally think that could work but the climate of political distrust out there is such that any change in voting is going to be fought vigorously. The political climate is just not there. Each side, would have reasons to support it but there is just no consensus of where this should go. The conflict on this topic and more importantly conflicts on other issues totally unrelated will keep and national changes immobilized for at least another eight years.

 

pubby