As someone who voted as soon as I was eligible, I don’t get this.
Emily May, vice president of the Associated Students of the University of Montana, who spoke against closing the University Center polling place, asked the commissioners not make their job any harder.
“I don’t know how often you talk to freshmen,” she said, “but it’s difficult explaining to them why they should vote, let alone where they should vote.”
I think it’s more than freshmen not voting. Here are some recent statistics from the Elections Office for Precinct 76, which votes at UC Center:
- In the federal primary election of 2004, 36 of 2100 registered electors voted at UC Center (1.71%)
- In the federal general in 2004, 35% voted at the campus polling place. 81 voted absentee.
- In the school election of 2004, 10 (1.87%) voted at UC Center.
- in the federal primary election of 2006, 57 of 2412 voters voted at the UC Center polling place (2.36%).
- In the federal general election of 2006, about 35% cast votes at the UC Center (366 out of 2692).
- In the 2006 school election, one voter showed up. Same for the school election in 2007.
- In the school election May 2008, no one showed up to vote at the UC Center. Seven cast absentee votes.
- In the federal primary 2008, 85 of 1841 voters voted at the polls (4.62%).
- In the 2008 federal general, 744 of 2191 voters came to the UC Center polling place, or about 34%. Another 13% voted absentee.
- In the 2009 city general mail-in election, 33 out of 1247 in Precinct 76 cast their ballots by mail.
(The Excel file is posted here.) In contrast, in the 2008 general, precinct 32 voted at 77%, precinct 44 at 80%, precinct 70 at 80%, and precinct 89 at 62%. Overall the county voted at 73%. I calculated those numbers from this report, pages 4-6.
By the way, anyone can vote by absentee permanently now. You don’t even have to be out of town or ill. How much more convenient could it be?
The fact is, the County is chronically short of trained election judges. After the hue and cry that went out for new blood in 2008, if they still don’t have enough judges they probably never will. And no, by law an election judge must be a registered elector. So recruiting high school students as poll workers will not fly in most cases.
So I can see why the UC Center polling place is on the chopping block. I have looked at quite a few election returns by precinct in recent years and can’t recall seeing turnout this dismal.
on Dec 17th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
They’re not so stupid as I thought.
on Dec 17th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
That’s one way to look at it.
on Dec 17th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Seems to me the logical solution to this perceived problem is to vote by mail. You rightly point out Carol that anyone can place their name on the permanent absentee list and vote by mail. The process needs to be carried a step forward and have all elections carried out by mail. No more polling places, no more judges to pay, no more worries that the voting place is handicap accessible. Win win all around.
The only drawback is the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to handle the mail. But twenty years from now we’ll probably all be voting on our home computers, or on our “tech savy” cell phones, or other interconnected electronic devices. Geek heaven!
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Yeah, sounds like a B-grade science fiction movie.
“And what do you think, Linda?” (Scene from “Fahrenheit 451.”)
That is just what we need techno-voting. We can vote every 15 minutes, maybe during commercial breaks on TV or while we are on the toilet.
Anyone who has belonged to a couple of civic organizations simultaneously, or served on any of the 25 to 50 town and county boards that are always looking for warm bodies, knows he probably voted on one dumb thing or another dozens of times a week.
We are crazy about voting.
It seems all we do is invent more opportunities to vote. And when you start to consider all the pseudo-voting activities we engage in, such as polls, surveys, questionnaires, etc., it seems like we are voting all the time. I have a scary feeling this is how democracy ends: Everyone spends all day voting. There is no time left for anything. Nothing gets done.
So I vote FOR anything that makes voting harder.
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 6:19 am
Vickie Zeier told me that we couldn’t have mail voting for federal elections. I thought it was federal law but it seems to be just state law which is more easily changed.
I think voting in person is preferable but having gone all through the election judge routine myself I can see what they’re up against. That and the HAVA changes after the 2000 election, election day registration etc.
Students who have not paid any attention to anything but the highest-profile races are wise not to vote IMO. As it is, plenty of the younger voters mark only the top of the ballot.
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Carol, you and I both know that it’s just as hard to convince plenty of people who aren’t students to vote down the ticket, or even to vote at all.
Are students who have not paid attention [...] any less qualified than the non-student adults who do the same?
For the record, I did not hear a peep about the judge shortage until about 6 months ago when Vicki stood next to McCullough to motivate groups to apply for HAVA grant (which Just Citizens tried to but was politely discouraged from doing), if I would have heard about it on campus in the past few years, I would have jumped at the opportunity.
That being said, I also know what it’s like to be new to Missoula, and I would have been hard pressed to find Paxson school two months into living here.
I still think closing ANY of the polling places is short-sighted and hasty considering the cost benefit to precinct consolidation.
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Steve, thanks for commenting. I guess I don’t understand if a student is new here, why not vote absentee at the home town? Why even be registered in Missoula? Or vote absentee here.
I think it was summer 2000 when the word went out for new election judges. I posted it and so did Blackbirds.
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Mail ballot elections, like Oregon. They work.
It’s not some vast right wing consperrracey to deprive the poor students of their rights.
For two years, my son voted in every election, permanent absentee, while he was a student at UM.
On an unrelated not, “Go, urp, eh, choke, Griz, blech.”
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Thank you for the sentiment, goof. Sadly, I will be driving to friggin’ Maxville tonight and will miss most the game.
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Having a hard time getting people to work a long day? Why not pay them more?
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Definitely rooting for the Griz, although not a big fan of the coach and I laughed hard and heartily at the Spectator advertisement today. But the Montana boys, like the kid from Havre, absolutely.
on Dec 19th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Binky, I don’t know. One of those things where you’d probably have to pay twice as much. For an ordinary ballot judge like me, day goes from 6 am to 9:30 pm or thereabouts. Just.Sitting.There.
Argghh.
And correction: the call for new judges went out early 2008 because I was trained in time for the May school election.
Anyway, it looks like the UC Center pollng place is out of danger. It makes sense to have one in a complex like that but the turnout numbers are still stunning after all the 2008 hopey changey brouhaha.
Of course outside of this are the numbers bused to the polls to register and vote on election day.
on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I don’t like making voting “easy” through same day registration and mail ballots. Some people are too poorly informed to vote, but that isn’t my problem. Easy voting means easy vote fraud. I know of one person who voted in two states last election. Montana in the AM and Idaho before the polls closed.
Vote? YES!
Vote often? NOOOOOOO!
Vote easy? NO! Register at least 90 days before election and PROVE you live here.
on Dec 29th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I think the horse has left the barn, Rocky.