[Durham INC] Early Voting Starts Tomorrow

[Pat Carstensen]

The full schedule of early voting is at

http://dconc.gov/government/departments-a-e/early-voting
There is early early voting at 5 locations (October 20-November 5) and voting at 8 more locations from October 27-November 5.

For information on candidates:

  *   There are a bunch of judges running.  The official voting guide is: http://www.ncsbe.gov/Portals/0/FilesP/PDF/2016_Voter_Judicial_Guide_Web.pdf
  *   WRAL: http://myballot.wral.com/build.do

Some bits about voting:

  *   Staff will be figuring out how to do things on Thursday.  Maybe wait until Friday to vote unless you are really dedicated to voting on the first day.  Monday and Tuesday are usually the lightest days.  Also, lots of people don't know that the polls are open until 7:30 most nights (except Halloween and the last day) so that might be a good time to go.
  *   The good news is that you can't communicate or take pictures with your cell phone, but you may consult it.  This is a change.
  *   There is "same-day registration" at early voting this year.  Bring something official that shows you living at the address at which you are registering, if you need to register.  To check on if, and where, you are registered, https://vt.ncsbe.gov/Voter_Search_Public/
  *   Early voting is also a good time to update / correct the name and address under which you are registered.
  *   If no-one did early voting, we would pretty much have to double the number of polling places, costing the county (that is, us taxpayers) a pile of money, so please don't feel like you are "being a bother" if you vote early.
  *   Sample ballots (and checking that you are registered) at: https://www.ncsbe.gov/webapps/voter_search/

If you have heard the stories about tampering with elections, the paper ballots we have in Durham County are pretty secure (they check the software before and after the elections by running through a known set of ballots).  Between the sayings "Three men may keep a secret if two of them are dead" and "Why mess around with a six gun when you can rob them with a fountain pen," I personally don't think it makes sense to try to send a lot of cheaters to the polls.  So as I see it, the main vulnerability would be in the registration information in the state database, such as

  *   taking folks out of the database (a reason to vote early so you can register if needed)
  *   marking a lot of people as "already voted" when they haven't (so they can't vote when they go to the polls),
  *   marking a lot of people who have voted as "not voted yet" (so they can go back and vote again),
  *   doing all the above

It's a good idea to keep checking that registration information on you is correct anyway, at https://vt.ncsbe.gov/voter_search_public/ (the new website makes this very difficult to find).  You can see whether you have voted if you hit the "+" in front of "voter history."  I think if there were a lot of complaints about the data in the registration area being wrong, they would start checking raw numbers and other records to see if something is going wrong.

Regards, pat
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.deltaforce.net/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20161019/35cb5e75/attachment.html>