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Got space in your garage or in your closed-down office? Help the Registrar of Voters office get all of the polling places it still needs!
Polling Place Recruiting Becoming More Difficult, by the Day
April 1, 2018 – It is increasingly difficult to recruit polling places, for a variety of reasons. For instance, a long-time polling place in an apartment complex clubhouse, located in Westminster (since 1994), recently told us that they no longer wanted to be a polling place due to parking and “space concerns”. Voters don’t understand these changes and dynamics, which make it demanding for voters and us alike. This election cycle, in particular, has been challenging due to numerous modernization and construction projects throughout the County. A strong economy can cause downstream effects on the recruitment of polling places.
We are currently missing 44 polling places – at a time when we should be “locked” for the June Primary. These issues are spread throughout Orange County – here’s the breakdown:
- South County: 25
- North County: 10
- West County: 5
- South Central County: 4
This is your Weekend Open Thread. Comment about that, or anything else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of reason, discretion, decency, and decorum.
*Since the last election……it was slated that OC Voters would be mostly voting by mail. The concept of physical polling places was considered to be – unsupportable financially
and that made it desireable to get rid of all by five Master Polling Places scattered around the county. Then came the election of 2016 – which has for all intent and purposes caused a giant schism…in the force. Philosophically and security wise….there is very little reason not to offer all registered voters – Vote by Mail. Right now between 25% and 33% of OC Voters are now voting by mail. Who tabulates and counts those ballots? The Registrar of Voters! Are their computers susceptible to virus and hacking attacks? Those questions have to be and should be answered by Neal Kelly himself. It can be well argued that Polling Place Ballots are also susceptible to manipulation, fraud, ballot shifting and stuffing….or could be. This however is tempered somewhat by the Polling Place Coordinators who oversee much of the process and should act as key expeditors throughout the process. In our humble opinion….Both Early Voting and Vote by Mail should be encouraged and utilized for most of the voting public. The most efficient method for voting however, will eventually turn to a cyber security bullet proof system, which allows people to vote on their cell phones, personal home computers and even by logging in at a local library to the Registrar of Voters web site and utilizing their own personal account info and countersigns. The easiest method of course would be to utilize thumb print identification and then place their California ID or California Drivers License to make sure that the info matches. For those without a California Drivers License they would require to obtain a no cost or low cost California ID. We support the work of Neal Kelley and his great staff of professionals at the Registrar’s Office. We all know that the answers to a security proof voting system will be required sometime in the near future. Whether that includes Biometric ID or Optical Face Recognition technology, we will all have to wait and see…..what the political ramifications of implementing such systems …might be.