After our bus tour of early voting sites last Friday, elections director Mike Ashe was kind enough to offer a behind-the-scenes tour of the Corporation St. operations as his department gears up for this fall's general election.
Included in the mix: a chance to perform a voting machine test on randomly selected optical ballot readers -- an opportunity no self-respecting ex-poli sci student could resist. (See beyond the jump below for a video summary of the process.)
Even though the election is over a month away, the Board of Elections office is already getting all its ducks in a row for the voting season to come.
First up: supplies. Boxes, and boxes, and boxes of supplies. One per precinct, with stickers noting the destination; color-coded to denote the nature of contents; with checklists on top to denote the presence of every item.
And what items? Everything from power strips to telephones to rubber bands, paper clips, three kinds of tape -- and a 50' string, the ideal length to measure the precise distance which campaigners have to remain away from the polling site.
The theme: be prepared for anything. That goes down to having an electrical power backup unit for the voting machine, to keep the optical scanning machine running for up to two hours in the event of a power failure at a site.
The machines themselves are securely locked up and ready to go for the election. Though not without testing: Ashe's team tests each machine thoroughly in advance of the election; then, the Board of Election itself randomly selects and tests 10% of the ballot scanners as another accuracy test.
Not that the testing ends there. After the election, a statistician from UNC comes in with a team of observers to perform a manual hand re-count of one externally-selected precinct.
One major benefit of Durham's paper ballot with an optical scan counting mechanism: the ability to perform an after-the-fact recount of the electronic tally via the paper ballots, a record of each voter's pen-marked choices that survives the election-day count, something that doesn't happen in a touch-screen system.
The statistician and the team manually check each ballot and tally the votes, then compare the values to those from the machine to ensure an accurate canvass.
Last week, I got the chance to manually mark up a few ballots myself and run them through the voting machine myself, then check them against the system. Not surprisingly, it was a perfect count:
Equipment aside, one of the biggest jobs this time of year is staffing, whether it's hiring up the poll and precinct workers, or getting temporary workers in to process the new voter registrations:
Ashe noted that given the bump in registrations this time of year, uses temp workers for the data entry, while having his staff (who normally perform the whole process during the rest of the year) perform the validation of eligibility.
It's all part of the quadrennial rush to get the BOE's staff and materials all prepped and ready for their biggest event: the always-interesting presidential elections.
I would like to know where the early election voting location is, dates & times available. Is it still at your office located across from the Durham Athletic Park? Please advise.
Posted by: William A. Harrat | October 17, 2008 at 08:08 AM
Early Vote Locations
* Board of Elections Office, 706 West Corporation Street, Durham
* NCCU Campus: Parish Center Meeting Room, 1400 South Alston Ave, Durham (former Holy Cross Catholic Church)
* East Regional Library, 211 Lick Creek Lane, Durham
* North Regional Library, 221 Milton Rd, Durham
* Forest View Elementary, 3007 Mt. Sinai Rd, Durham
* Southwest Elementary, 2320 Cook Rd., Durham
* Duke University West Campus: Old Trinity Room, West Union Bldg., 114 Chapel Drive, Durham
Early Vote Schedule
Thursday, October 16th thru Saturday, November 1st
Monday thru Friday 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM -- All locations
Saturday, October 18th 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM -- All locations
Sunday, October 19th 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM -- All locations
Saturday, October 25th 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM -- All locations
Sunday, October 26th 12:00 PM to 5:30PM -- All locations
Thursday, October 30th 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM -- All locations
Friday, October 31st 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM -- All locations
Saturday, November 1st 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM -- All locations
You can still Register and Vote thru November 1st
A North Carolina resident who is qualified to register to vote may register in-person and vote at a One-Stop Site in the person's county of residence [now thru November 1]
More inforamtion... http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/content.aspx?ID=32
Posted by: John Schelp | October 17, 2008 at 11:43 AM