You Can't Vote If You Don't Know Where to Go
Published October 26, 2004
One week to go until the election, and your vote won't count if you can't find the right place to place it. MyPollingSite.com is there to help the lost and wayward:
- Welcome to MyPollingSite.com
We offer a Free nonpartison web based service to help voters find their polling site in four clicks or less.
In the 2000 Presidential election we helped 129,000 voters find their polling site. 8000 were from Florida.
This site was created in a reaction to the often hard to locate and impossible to remember polling site pages. For instance, if you wanted to vote in Grays Harbor County in Washinton state you would after much poking around come to this webpage: Http://www.co.grays-harbor.wa.us/info/auditor/elections/index.htm, or you can come here to www.mypollingsite.com. And if you run into a friend on the street who wants to know where to vote, which do you tell him?
There are 3,040 counties in the United States, and 36 percent of them have online polling data. Those 36 percent of counties hold 70 percent of the U.S. population. And we can get you there in 4 clicks or less. For the 30 percent of Americans not in one of those counties we offer an address and phone number of your local elections office.
It works very well: I found my polling place in the promised 4 clicks - make sure you know where yours is. Here in Ohio there is all kinds of maneuvering going on regarding who gets to vote and where:
- The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections must find more than 17,000 registered voters by Friday to tell them they may be culled from the rolls by Republican challengers.
One problem: the very reason these voters are being challenged is because the elections board can't seem to reach them.
On Friday, the Ohio Republican Party filed papers questioning the validity of the registrations because the voters' addresses appeared to be wrong and the mail from the elections board was being returned.
The voters must be allowed to show that their registrations are valid before Sunday. So today, election officials will begin mailing out urgent notices to these voters to the same flawed addresses on their registration forms
- You Can't Vote If You Don't Know Where to Go
- Published: October 26, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet, Politics: Law and Rights
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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Comments on this articleComments
is that a particularly Democratic trait?
I believe that voting by mail would solve many of the problems involved, including GOP efforts to move polling places out of minority neighborhoods close to election day. I blogged Philadelphia's experience with that last week.
Mac you want to trust the postal service? Surly you jest, there are already reports of "lost in the mail" ballots.
"The attorneys said federal law prevents election officials from denying people the right to vote because of an error or omission on a voter registration application where such error is not material in determining whether a person is qualified to vote in the election."
US District Court Judge James Lawrence King seems to disagree with that in a Florida suit that was thrown out yesterday.
Florida election officials will not be required to process incomplete voter registration forms for the presidential election, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.One would have to assume that the judge researched federal election law and didn't find anything that requires errors not material in determining if a person is qualified to vote.
U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King said the three prospective voters for whom the lawsuit was filed did not have the legal standing to pursue the case, which was backed by the AFL-CIO. ... Attorneys with the Washington-based Advancement Project said the plaintiffs would appeal by Friday. The group argued that the rejections disqualified more than 14,000 people across the state, with a disparate effect on minorities. Nearly 45 percent of the challenged forms in one county, Duval, came from blacks.
It should also be noted that Judge King (an African American) is probably the most liberal federal judge in the Southern District of Florida. I find it hard to conceive of these plaintiffs getting a more friendly bench. The fact that he ruled against them speaks volumes for their "hopes" in the Eleventh Circuit (appellate court).
That only solution to voting fraud, as well as many other types, is a national bio-metric ID card. One citizen, one vote. No registration required, just present your card and vote.
Will it happen - hell no, the ACLU pussies and their ilk will fight it tooth and nail.
Al Gore himself said he would win if "overvotes" were counted.
If I'm a "bigot" then so is Al Gore.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/21455)
Ohio still relies heavily on punch-card ballots. Wanna bet lotsa Dem voters fuck it up, and vote for 2 or more people for Prez on the same ballot? ;)