[Durham INC] Early voting update

Wed Oct 4 19:45:08 EDT 2023

I actually like a structure where every position is elected at the same time every four years; local, state and federal. It should cause elected officials to actually spend time for 2+ years doing the people’s work - and not 6 months of that and then fund raising and campaigning with every 2 year election.
I also believe we need to change ward elections to the candidates only being voted on by residents of that ward. Most other cities operate that way. It gives those ward residents a voice while the at large members of Council represent the entire city. When asked for help with a specific SE area issue, Councilperson Middleton told us he doesn’t work for us, he works for the entire city. That has to change.

Stephen Knill
knillsj at gmail.com<mailto:knillsj at gmail.com>
+(917) 620-4941

From: INC-list <inc-list-bounces at lists.deltaforce.net> on behalf of Philip Azar <philip917azar at gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 7:12 PM
To: RICHARD FORD <rbford at aol.com>
Cc: inc listserv <inc-list at lists.deltaforce.net>
Subject: Re: [Durham INC] Early voting update
From the last parts of a New York Times Article:

When cities shift to on-cycle elections, Hajnal and his two colleagues write, the non-Hispanic white share, previously two-thirds of the vote, “decreases by nearly 10 percentage points” in presidential election years and “by 5.7 points when they are concurrent with midterm elections.”

The Latino share increases “from about 18 percent in off-cycle elections to just under 25 percent when these elections are consolidated with presidential contests.” The Asian American “share of the electorate increases by 2.3 percentage points when cities move to the same date as presidential elections,” which may not seem like much “but it’s important to keep in mind that Asian Americans account for only 7.7 percent of the electorate in off-cycle elections, so this represents an increase of 30 percent.”

The changed composition of the electorate in on- and off-cycle elections is equally remarkable for young and old voters. The authors found that older voters “account for nearly half of off-cycle voters. But the share of older voters drops almost 22 points in local elections that coincide with presidential elections and 13 points for midterm elections.” The share cast by younger voters, in turn, “almost doubles during presidential elections.”

In the case of all these factors — race, ethnicity and age — Hajnal, Kogan and Markarian conclude that “on-cycle elections produce a more representative electorate.”

The paper cited in the article goes on:

As a result, we should expect the electorate during high-cost off-cycle elections to include disproportionately more high-propensity voters like older, white homeowners who have abundant political resources and for low-cost on-cycle elections to draw in relatively more low-propensity voters including younger Americans, racial minorities, and the disadvantaged.
I commend the paper in particular as it delves into the results of their studies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/opinion/republicans-democrats-voters-elections.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

and

PSR_2100091 374..383 (archive.org)<https://web.archive.org/web/20220420060914id_/https:/www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/39CE6B9F0E906228F695248C874C0C36/S0003055421000915a.pdf/div-class-title-who-votes-city-election-timing-and-voter-composition-div.pdf>

On Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 6:29 PM RICHARD FORD via INC-list <inc-list at lists.deltaforce.net<mailto:inc-list at lists.deltaforce.net>> wrote:
How do you feel about  doing away with odd year voting? You could argue that it acts as a very effective form of voter suppression!
Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 30, 2023, at 6:19 PM, Pat Carstensen <pats1717 at hotmail.com<mailto:pats1717 at hotmail.com>> wrote:

After 10 days of early voting, 4459 people have cast votes at early voting, about 2.5% of the registered voters.  I think this puts us slightly ahead of where we were in 2021. Unfortunately it is way less than voting in 2022!

More and more people have been voting by mail (how to do it is at https://www.dcovotes.com/voters/voting/absentee-voting) so that will help the turn-out percentage as well.

The schedule and locations for early voting are at: https://www.dcovotes.com/home/showpublisheddocument/39098/638233928770830000

Details on the demographics of the turn-out are at: https://www.dconc.gov/home/showdocument?id=39520&t=638310047184110464

Picture ID seems to be going OK -- BoE has a lot of information on it at: https://www.dcovotes.com/voters/voter-id

A couple other changes:

  *   There are new improved machines to mark ballots for folks who are visually impaired or whose hands don't work as well as they used to.  (Please use them so we get more experience with them before next year).

  *   The folks checking you in will ask what year you were born in before they ask your address (they should not ask your full birthday unless that is the only way to find your record in the database).  You don't have to tell them how old you are, but it helps the process since every year there is a mix-up of 2 of members of the same household (dad has voted but Junior is the one marked in records as having voted), and they are hoping this will reduce the errors.  I guess at least some people are more embarrassed at giving their middle name than their birth year anyhow (-:

  *   Current law says your ID needs to "substantially" match in picture and name.  The address only needs to match if you are registering as a new voter.  The birthday doesn't need to match (but we have very occasionally found we have "bad data" and this is a good opportunity to get the information corrected).  If you want to check the name, address and birth year in your record, do a voter look-up at https://vt.ncsbe.gov/RegLkup/.

  *   The "ballot box" (technically the tabulator) where you put your ballot at the end has cool new graphics on its screen.
Regards, pat
_______________________________________________
INC Website: https://sites.google.com/view/durhaminc/

Durham INC Mailing List
inc-list at lists.deltaforce.net<mailto:inc-list at lists.deltaforce.net>
https://lists.deltaforce.net/mailman/listinfo/inc-list
_______________________________________________
INC Website: https://sites.google.com/view/durhaminc/

Durham INC Mailing List
inc-list at lists.deltaforce.net<mailto:inc-list at lists.deltaforce.net>
https://lists.deltaforce.net/mailman/listinfo/inc-list
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.deltaforce.net/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20231004/ce701b46/attachment.htm>