The county, the city and the school district don’t get it. I heard this morning there was confusion AGAIN on super precincts VS. regular precincts. C’mon on already, instead of worrying about disclaimers on the Jesus plows, let’s worry about making elections consistent!

There has been serious talk about doing a petition drive to force the county, city and school district to have consistent polling places. The idea would be to eliminate super precincts, but also consolidate the existing precincts and use them every election.

While the super precinct idea may help with convenience for some people, it also causes issues for people who don’t have transportation.

The whole idea was cooked up by the worst SOS we have had in state history, Jason Gant. A person who has used his office to be very partisan, applying different rules to different parties.

Some would ask HOW Gant has been partisan with E-Poll books. E-Poll books are sold by the very company that supplied the SD GOP Thousands of dollars in campaign contributions when Gant was in charge of those duties. This is simply a payback to those companies, not a benefit to the voter. Gant has used his position as SOS to convince counties and municipalities across the state to use the books.

Time to ditch the idea, along with Jason Gant.

10 Thoughts on “The confusion of musical precints returns

  1. teatime on November 4, 2014 at 8:29 pm said:

    I’ll sign that petition.

  2. Concerned Citizen on November 5, 2014 at 2:14 pm said:

    Oh how the misinformed do prattle. I would like to begin by saying the SF School District is in the business of educating children. The administration has always looking for ways to reduce costs that have nothing to do with educating students which led administrators to research vote centers and e-pollbook systems.

    First, may one remind folks that the SF School District and the then Minnehaha County Auditor, Sue Roust, pitched the idea of e-pollbooks and vote centers to Gant when he was a senator in the SD Legislature. Secondly, he introduced legislation which was passed and signed by the governor. Gant could not have done this alone. So that being said here are some points to ponder:

    • The first e-pollbook system that was used in 2011 and 2012 was from Election Sales and Software of Omaha. It did not perform as was hoped so more research was done to find another vendor. By this time Minnehaha had a new auditor and he had to be brought into the loop.

    • Several other e-pollbooks were analyzed by staff from the Secretary of State office, the Minnehaha County Auditor’s office, the City Clerk’s Office and the School District. The e-pollbooks sold by Hart Intercivic have performed much better, the connectivity is better, the ease of use is better, the quality of the overall service and product is better. Any issues we had in the 2013 and 2014 elections were with the peripherals (printers and scanners)—not the e-pollbooks.

    • The city, county and school district election officials met in 2013 and decided that the 13 vote centers would be where all elections would be held and then when a general election was held, there would be more centers in addition to the 13…along with most of the centers already in use outside of Sioux Falls. The city uses them, the school district uses them, the county admonishes that we need consistency but will not be consistent with the other two entities. So the county wants the other two entities to be like them; but this is a democracy and majority rules…right?!

    • The city has terms that are elected every two years. The school district has an election every year to rotate the 3-year terms of incoming members (2-1-2). The county has elections every two years. The officials of the three entities work closely to keep elections consistent. They all pay the workers the same, they use the same workers, they use the same instructions, they use the same counters, etc.

    • The County Commission needs to move into the 20th century…the use of e-pollbooks is not 21st century technology. This is not voting electronically. This is simply checking in the voters a little faster at a more convenient place. Yes, I know that in 2012 the voting at the high schools was a nightmare, but that was due to which entity would house the election server and the city and county were not willing so the district did step up; but to do that the election had to be held physically in district buildings. I heard no complaints in 2013 or 2014.

    • We need to listen to our older voters but cater to our younger voters as they expect more convenience and efficiency than the county is willing to give them. GenXrs and Millenials expect and embrace the use of technology and many states, Texas, Colorado, North Dakota, Indiana, Maryland—to name a few use e-pollbooks. If a city like Dallas or Galveston can use e-pollbooks successfully, you’d think a county like Minnehaha could figure it out with a little Midwestern common sense.

    • The SF School District is the business of educating children, with State aid to education taking huge cuts in 2012 and is still not up to the amount schools received in 2011, the district is always looking for efficiencies. In order to reduce some costs that have nothing to do with educating students and to ease some stress for our working parents, the district did implement the vote centers and voter turnout did increase…not to the point that anyone should be happy with…but it did go up and costs did go down.

    • You may have heard comments about “musical precincts” but I heard questions about why the county doesn’t have vote centers so voters can go where they choose. Personally, I heard appreciation of vote centers when a dutiful daughter got off work at 4, picked up her elderly mom and drove her to Mom’s vote center and the daughter was told she could vote there too. She was so grateful that she didn’t have to rush across town to get to her precinct before 7:00. She said many times she was too late to vote or felt like she was keeping the election workers late and rushed through her ballot. Vote centers allow voters to vote at the first stop; no need to send them to another location. If the county had used vote centers on Tuesday, no Minnehaha County registered voter would have been turned away to go to another place.

  3. CC, thanks for your input.

    I have often believed that voting should be made as easy as possible, and funding should never be an issue. Of all the things the city and district spend money on (heck they give the Super $100 a week ‘play money’) I absolutely hate the excuse of ‘saving money’ on the election. It’s a big pile of BS.

  4. Sue Roust on November 5, 2014 at 3:26 pm said:

    CC is really well-informed about the election process — that’s a very accurate post.

    Yes, I did pitch vote centers/e-pollbooks and testify in Pierre on them. I think vote centers are great for small elections, but they’re not manageable for a general election. I worked at Faith Baptist for the April city election. We had 4,200 voters in a 33% turnout election, and I know people left without voting because of parking issues. In a general election with maybe a 70-75% turnout, there’s no way to control how many voters show up at one place — you might have 7000-8000 at one vote center, and there’s probably no place other than the Arena complex or maybe the Fairgrounds that could handle it.

    County elections would benefit by using e-pollbooks at the larger precincts — they’re faster than looking up names in a 3-ring binder, and they show where the voter should go, greatly reducing calls to the Auditor’s office. I wish the county commissioners could understand that you can use e-pollbooks without using vote centers.

  5. I guess it’s not the convenience of the E-Books that I have a problem with. Use them. What I am asking for is consistency in elections within the city. And stop trying to pinch pennies on elections. We have plenty of Federal Dollars to help us in the HAVA funds.

    Maybe turnout is non-consistent because the polls are? Has anyone ever thought of that? What a concept? Huh?

    Come up with 40-60 regular precincts and use the books IN EVERY ELECTION! It’s the back and forth that is disenfranchising voters. We have had plenty of time to fix this. Fix it!

  6. Concerned Citizen on November 6, 2014 at 9:55 am said:

    Now that we have the events center, maybe the whole election process should be moved to the Arena. One stop for anyone in the city….use electronic poll books to check voters in and then move them to a ballot table to get the correct ballot. The arena could handle that number of voters spread throughout a 12 hour period and all the workers would be in one place. Poll watchers would have an easier time of it too.

    The city owns the Arena and could make it accessible to all the entities for elections…no more waiting for ballots from the far south or west side of town…all ballots would come to the County from the Arena. It is a concept that is used in other states as well.

    Sioux Falls Metro could help out by have a bus that goes to the Arena on Election Day as well.

    There are ways to have efficient elections without having to staff, pay rent for, and deliver to/from over 50 locations in the city of Sioux Falls.

    By the way, I believe only the county or state has access to those federal dollars.

  7. The city did use the HAVA money to purchase one of the machines.

    While your idea of having 1-mega precinct may be a way to save money, I have to tell you, this is an election, voting is sacred, not a cattle roundup.

    We must find ways to make it more convenient and easy, not cost effective. Prudence should be used when we are building entertainment temples for the Haves, elections are not a thing we need prudence on.

  8. Concerned Citizen on November 6, 2014 at 12:37 pm said:

    Yes you are correct, the City did use the county’s HAVA funds, but the City has to reimburse the County for those HAVA funds.

  9. I haven’t heard that. As I understood it from Lorie Hogstad the Feds were taking care of it. I have a call into someone who would know.

  10. Just got word that the city is paying for the machine, likely come out of the CIP.

Post Navigation