Voting Shouldn't Be Rocket Science
We're catching this action unfolding in the primary races taking place in Maryland, and we're not digging it - especially considering the number of African American candidates in major races in that state. Washington Post reports:
Early morning voters were forced to cast provisional, hand-written ballots at Montgomery County's 238 polling places, while election staffers scrambled to delivered the forgotten voting cards as quickly as possible. Several precincts ran out of the paper ballots, and workers from at least one precinct went to a copy shop to make more. Some poll workers, according to witnesses, did not know the provincial ballots were an option and told voters to try again later in the day.
According to reports, it apparently gets messier than that.
The predictable lack of outrage from the larger body politic will keep this blog awake for the coming weeks into November. Some say it's disorganization. Others will say incompetence. Many will, unfortunately, wake up the next morning and forget it happened or feel that "it doesn't matter anyway." We see it as a dress rehearsal for something a lot more sinister.
The one function of democratic government that should be the most efficient and consistently perfect function is the function to vote. It's becoming increasingly apparent and disturbing that a vast number of elections administrators, poll workers, precinct judges and others charged to manage our most fundamental right do not take this function seriously.
Early morning voters were forced to cast provisional, hand-written ballots at Montgomery County's 238 polling places, while election staffers scrambled to delivered the forgotten voting cards as quickly as possible. Several precincts ran out of the paper ballots, and workers from at least one precinct went to a copy shop to make more. Some poll workers, according to witnesses, did not know the provincial ballots were an option and told voters to try again later in the day.
According to reports, it apparently gets messier than that.
The predictable lack of outrage from the larger body politic will keep this blog awake for the coming weeks into November. Some say it's disorganization. Others will say incompetence. Many will, unfortunately, wake up the next morning and forget it happened or feel that "it doesn't matter anyway." We see it as a dress rehearsal for something a lot more sinister.
The one function of democratic government that should be the most efficient and consistently perfect function is the function to vote. It's becoming increasingly apparent and disturbing that a vast number of elections administrators, poll workers, precinct judges and others charged to manage our most fundamental right do not take this function seriously.
posted by BPblogger at 11:40 AM
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