INC NEWS - May 2 elections

[pat carstensen]

Following up Mike's reminder to get out to vote on May 2

The precinct map is here:
http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/gis/precincts.cfm
You have to vote at your assigned polling place

To find out if you are registered and where you vote (including pictures of 
the place and directions):
http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/votersearch/seimsvot.htm
(filling in the county on the search thing makes it work a LOT faster!)

Also, we have new voting machines.  We still are doing optical scans of 
paper ballots, but
* Each voting place has a touch-screen machine that will mark ballots for 
you
* The scanner will let you know if you voted for 2 people where you could 
only vote for 1
* You fill in a circle left of the name instead of completing an arrow

The only drawback I see with new machines is that they don't separate out 
ballots that the machine can't detect any votes on, as the old machines did. 
The folks at the Board of Elections have done a lot of testing to find out 
what the new machines don't pick up, and the machines do pick up checks or 
x's in the circle.  Also, the tally at the end gives how many ballots it 
couldn't read results for, so if the vote is close and the machines report 
they missed a lot of votes, we can do a hand recount.  But voters should 
take care to follow the instructions on how to vote -- don't circle the 
candidate's name, use blue or black pen, etc.

Finally, the NC judicial races are nominally non-partisan, but the parties 
do have their favorites:
http://www.ncgop.org/home/index.asp
http://www.ncdp.org/judicial2006
The Republican site says "this election will determine who controls the NC 
Supreme Court"

Hope this helps,
Pat