As I posted about a few weeks back, the SF School District will be using Super Precincts or Vote Centers, whatever you want to call them, for the School Board election on Tuesday (May 24). Didn’t hear about it? Probably not. Besides a couple of stories in our local rag, there hasn’t been much fanfare. This election is important, because they will be testing a new system.
The School Board will hold its Election to fill one vacancy when the term of Debbie D. Hoffman expires in July. The School District’s annual Election will be held May 24, 2010 from 7:00 A.M. until 7:00 P.M. The District will conduct its Election in using 10 polling locations.  SDCL 13-7-28 allows the District to use electronic pollbooks and Vote Centers for its 2011 election. With the use of the electronic pollbooks and Vote Centers, voters registered in the Sioux Falls School District will be allowed to vote in any one of the ten locations (for more information please click here (Changes in Voting Procedures for 2011).
If you read the PDF, you will see that you can vote AT ANY location as long as you have a valid ID. This is a great idea, long past due and something our city clerk, Debra Owen has been working on for awhile. And while this is great news to make voting easier I’m puzzled why there has been little to no media about it. Talk about mass confusion come Tuesday. Besides the media saying little about it, the school district has done little to publicize it either. I think they should have sent out a postcard to all the registered voters explaining the new election process. This probably wouldn’t have cost them over $10,000. But I guess in this democracy called Sioux Falls informing voters is a waste of money. Unfortunate really. It’s not like voter turnout is ever that high during school board elections, we have a history of low voter turnout, and not informing voters about Vote Centers will only make the turnout lower IMO. We’ll see on Tuesday, I guess.