I received a press release from the Secretary of State's office the day before the election. According to the release, there were special "Election Day Rapid Response Teams" standing by to assist with any problems that might crop up at polling places.
The press release also stated that there was something along the lines of a 60% turnout expected.
This raises a few questions in my mind:
When did the Bridgeport ballot shortage become apparent?
Did anyone contact the SoS's office about this?
Were any of the EDRRT's dispatched to observe and assist the Bridgeport crisis?
If it was commonly assumed there could be a 60% turnout, was anyone from the SoS's office tasked with calling each town in the days before the election and checking to see that they had at least that many on hand? (Bridgeport only ordered enough ballots for roughly 31% turnout)
I dunno, but judging from the severity of the crisis in Bridgeport on Tuesday, we should have seen swarms of specially modified Humvees, complete with two-sided ballot printing machines, screaming down I-91 with sirens blaring carrying the crack Election Day Rapid Response Teams into position, ready to attack the problem!
That would have been neat.
3 comments:
From what I've seen (and read) in the news the whole business down there appears to be a major fiasco. The head of the Bridgeport elections board should be fired, and the state elections officials should be called into question, as well. Who's monitoring / in charge of this stuff?
Here's a printing firm that has been the Bridgeport area for decades:
http://www.champdirect.com/Catg1.asp?Cat1ID=3
See that list of web presses? That's some major freaking firepower there. Even one of the presses on that list could have knocked out that shortfall in a matter of minutes.
lakezoarian, printing needs to be from a SOTS-approved list of printers (there are state contracting and chain-of-custody issues, as you might imagine), and the ballot production needs to be closely coordinated with memory card programming.
That's not to say that they shouldn't have had a better process in place on election day, but it's not as simple as you might think, either.
Post a Comment