Thursday, September 18, 2008

Will the ballot flap hurt early voting efforts?

Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from lawyers representing both sides of the ballot dispute. Bobby Harrison in today's Daily Journal wrote that a decision will come in "due course." As we wait for the decision to be rendered there is one side issue that could quickly escalate into a major issue. State law requires that absentee ballots are available 45 days before election day, which is this coming Monday.

WJTV reported that our county election commissioners are having to wait for the decision before they can print the ballot. Hinds County Election Commissioner Connie Cochran expressed her concerns to WJTV.

Right now "It's impeding our progress in the election process," Cochran says.

Even so Cochran says it will take at least a week and a half to print the 8,000 absentee ballots Hinds County needs to cover the expected demand.

"When we ever find out how the court rules, if it means that they'll have to be reprogrammed and reprinted out and sent to the printers to be made into scannable ballots," she says.

Cochran says most of the state's 82 counties also use scannable ballots.

"So 79 counties are in the same situation that we are."

3 comments:

  1. The Court was aware of the issue; Justice Randolph asked repeated questions about the deadline for absentees and overseas folks. The bad thing is that the faster you press a slow-moving deliberative body to act the worse they perform.

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  2. To clarify--I don't mean "slow moving" - "bad." Appeals courts are meant to take their time, and in fact I'm in favor of them taking a little bit longer sometimes when there are complex issues, like the death penalty, on the table. But they're geared to work over 2/3 of a year, and when you ask them to do their work in a bare fraction of that time, the product can suffer.

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  3. The GOvernor lost!!!

    http://www.folo.us/2008/09/18/barbour-v-berger-the-governor-lost-the-ballot-dispute/

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