The Collin County Observer™

I'm not sure they do.

The county wants to participate in a pilot program that would consolidate neighborhood precincts into fewer election day 'Vote Centers'. These Vote Centers would operate similar to the Early Voting polling places that voters are already used to. In a Vote Center, any county registered voter may vote in any Vote Center in the county.

Voters would no longer be required to cast their ballots in their neighborhood precinct polling places - in fact, their neighborhood polling places would no longer exist.

The concept of Vote Centers has been around for several years. Larimer County in Colorado has successfully used the Election Day Vote Center (EDVC) model for several years. In 2006 and in 2008, Lubbock County, here in Texas, also used EDVCs.

Last week, Dr. Robert M. Stein of Rice University in Houston gave a presentation to the county's "Site Selection Committee" on data drawn from both Lubbock and Larimer County's experiences.

The data presented to the committee was encouraging. According to Dr. Stein, the use of EDVC's was well received by the voters and may have even enhanced the turnout of voters who do not normally vote in all elections.

But what exactly is a Vote Center? Is it just a typical neighborhood polling place where anyone in the county can vote?

Wikipedia defines them as, "A vote center sometimes known as a super precinct is a polling place that combines multiple precincts allowing voters to choose at which location to vote. Voter centers can be used to allow voters to choose from any polling place within a larger jurisdiction, commonly county."

Larimer County's definition is: "Vote Center is defined as ''a polling place at which any registered elector in the political subdivision holding the election may vote, regardless of the precinct in which the elector resides'.

The Vote Center Model affords the voter the convenience of appearing at any Vote Center in the political subdivision to cast a ballot which contains every race and issue on which he or she is entitled to vote.

According to Larimer County, Vote Centers must:

• have secure electronic connection (such as T1 lines) to the pollbook.
• one Vote Center for every 10,000 active registered voters
• The site must have the square footage necessary to accommodate voting equipment and to meet anticipated voter turnout.
• There must be adequate parking, preferably on-site with good lighting and some parking spaces that are close to the building so they can be reserved for voters with disabilities.
• Locations on bus routes and major thoroughfares are preferable, for easy voter access.
• Easily identifiable buildings within the community are preferable, because they are easier for voters to locate.

Larimer County's Vote Centers included Hotels, Large Churches, Government Buildings, Colleges and Malls.

In Lubbock County, their Site Selection Committee met for several months, only selecting sites after planning parking, floor space, accessibility and traffic routes.

Vote Center can enhance the voter's experience, but they can also go horribly wrong as is detailed in a 2006 article from the Denver Post:

Vote centers "a total fiasco"
New system to ease ballot-casting a frustrating exercise for many

By Monte Whaley and Joey Bunch / Denver Post Staff Writers

Vote centers were designed to make casting ballots easier and more convenient, but on Tuesday, they produced jangled nerves, technological gaffes and long lines across Colorado.

From urban Denver to suburban Douglas County to rural Routt County, there were long lines at vote centers.

Douglas County voters may have been hit the hardest, as some lined up more than four hours for a chance to cast a ballot.

Some left in frustration without voting and lashed out at election officials.

"They need to be held accountable for this," said Tanya Creighton, who tried to vote in the morning but faced a 1½-hour wait.

Creighton ended up waiting almost two hours at a voting center in the afternoon before she made it to a booth.

The most common complaint was the lack of computers needed to screen prospective voters.

One of the longest ballots in Colorado's history also kept voters pondering for up to 15 minutes each or longer, say election officials.

Douglas County spent $1.4 million on 300 new voting machines this year. Carole Murray, the county's election chief, said Wednesday that 500 were needed Tuesday.

The last vote was cast at 1:30 a.m. in Highlands Ranch.

The county will set up an advisory panel made up of residents, county officials, the secretary of state's office and representatives of the major parties to study ways to avoid a repeat in the 2008 presidential election.

"We need to do a better job as government," said County Commissioner Steve Boand. "Whether we need to add 200 machines or 300 more, I think we need some time to sort that out."

Poll officials in Routt County were not adequately trained to deal with the new electronic- voting machines and struggled to get the computers back online when the printers crashed, said Routt County Clerk Kay Weinland.

The length of the ballot and the 60 percent voter turnout also overwhelmed the available machines, Weinland said. He promised to solve the problem for the next election.

Denver officials today will discuss problems that led to two- to three- hour waits at the city's 55 vote centers, said at-large Councilman Doug Linkhart.

Among those problems were having only four or five computers at a vote center to check on hundreds of voter registrations. "It was a total fiasco," Linkhart said.

Tuesday afternoon, Denver election officials sent another 20 computers to centers in a move to ease congestion.

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What these Colorado counties learned was that Vote Centers are not just the same old polling places, but with a new rule stating that anyone in the county can vote there.

Vote Centers are "Super Precincts". They are much larger than traditional polling places, they have secure data communications, they have 6-10 electronic poll books, they have adequate parking, access and floor space.

Collin County elections has proposed Vote Center locations that are, in the great majority of cases, the same locations that were used as neighborhood polling places. With one exception, no attempt has been made to locate Vote Centers where people work, drive and shop.

For many of the proposed locations, there has been little or no attempt to survey and document floor space, parking or voter travel patterns.

Many of these locations are cramped on a typical election day, but little thought has been given to securing commitments for larger spaces and dedicated voter parking. There is no time to do so.

While Lubbock County spent months selecting and planning its Vote Centers, Collin county believes it can do so in two weeks.

Because of the time crunch, no attempt has been made to predict the voter turnout at each of the proposed Vote Centers, and then plan for that turnout.

Data communications will be dependent on existing internet networks, wireless cards, and in a few places even dial-up modems. No stand alone secure network is planned.

Some members of Collin County's site Selection Committee (including this author) have insisted that because of the lack of planning it would be rash to use Vote Centers to reduce the traditional number of poll locations.

The county is only asking to use the Vote Centers for the Constitutional Amendment election in 2009. However, the work done for the 2009 election will likely be the template used by the county in the 2010 General Election.

The last Constitutional election was held in 2007. For that election, the county used about 50 election day polling places - and there were problems with so few locations.

I was the election judge at the Wylie High School. For much of the day, voters had to wait in line for up to an hour, voters were unable to find parking spaces and left, and in the evening the lines of waiting voters grew so that we still had voters in line after 9 PM - two hours after the polls closed.

Allen had it worse, they didn't finish voting until after 9:30 PM. (Those two locations, Allen Municipal Bldg and Wylie High School are on the list of proposed 2009 Vote Centers.)

Because of these past problems and current planning issues, several members of the Site Selection Committee believe that a minimum of 60 Vote Centers be established for the 2009 election. The committee added additional locations in Allen and in and near Wylie. Other locations were added in areas with large minority or senior citizen populations.

However, others believe that the committee should reduce the number of locations with a maximum not to exceed 51. County Judge Keith Self has put the issue on Monday morning's Commissioner's Court agenda.

The Commissioners could vote to allow the committee to proceed as it thinks best, to kill the whole plan or to try to require that the committee limit itself to choosing 51 locations.

Later on Monday night, the Site Selection committee is planned to hold its final public meeting to vote on the number and locations of the Vote Centers.

The Site Selection committee will meet at 7 PM Monday, August 10 at Collin College Preston Ridge Campus, Founders Hall, Shawnee Room F–148, 9700 Wade Blvd, Frisco, TX. The public is invited and public input is encouraged.

Bill

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UPDATE 10:30 AM, August 10

The Commissioners Court just voted to require that the Site Selection Committee limit the number of polling places to 57.

UPDATE 12:00 AM, August 10

The Site Selection Committee, citing the impossibility of adequately evaluating poll sites in the two weeks permitted it, voted 5-3 to recommend all 63 locations as vote centers in the 209 Constitutional Amendments election. It is now up to the county commissioners to decide what they will do next, since they voted to require that the committee recommend no more than 57 locations.