Comments on: How do you decide how many booths to send to a polling place?

By: smbean

smbean — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 15:26:00 +0000

I had a friend wait in a line to vote for 3 hours in the Plano,Tx. area during the 2000 election.
Maybe with grace period voter registration and voting plus the state could be adding early voting will cut down the lines. Texas had early voting and it did not help. I’m County Clerk in Macon County. Mark appears to be placing enough booths in each precinct. Many precincts he is placing a greater number of booths than we do.
Finding and keeping election judges is the biggest election related problem for the County Clerk. The political parties have the responsibility to find and recommend election judges. Across the state it does not happen. The City of Chicago has been short over 500 election judges on some election days.
We use both high school and community college students as election judges.
Mark, I think the blog is a great idea. It will cut down the phone calls.

By: Kiyoshi Martinez

Kiyoshi Martinez — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 06:11:00 +0000

Interesting to hear a public official speak on a topic that many, I assume, do not know the full details about.

I did not know that election judges were sometimes chosen by political parties, which raises a few eyebrows for me. It just seems really inefficient to me.

I'm curious if it would be possible for our county to do something such as voting early, perhaps openning polls in limited numbers the night before to decrease the burden on election day?

If the volume of people is a problem, it would seem to me that perhaps a day and a half of voting could lighten the load.

By: IlliniPundit

IlliniPundit — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 03:54:00 +0000

Wow. This is a perfect example of how a blog should be used to improve communication between an elected official and the public. There’s no way an explanation like this would have ever made it, uncut, into the NG.

Great job, and keep up the great work.

By: Anna Marshall

Anna Marshall — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 19:12:00 +0000

This was incredibly helpful and full of a great deal of very useful information that I will most certainly pass along to my students. I particularly appreciate your observation that all voters should try — if at all possible — to go to the polls at times other than “peak times” — early in the morning, lunch and end of the day.

But your response raises some additional questions that I hope you will address — specifically about election judges. If there are shortages of election judges, why would some people get turned away from the training sessions that the Clerk’s office runs?

I encouraged my students to participate in the voting process by becoming election judges, and about 15 wanted to do it, but only 1 made the cut. The rest said that they were told by the Clerk’s office that they weren’t needed. Could this have been the result of the political parties choosing the election judges? Or are there other reasons for the Clerk’s office to turn away registered voters who want to be election judges.

Thanks again for your helpful post on a very important issue.