I would like to ask the admin team to consider creating multiple voting booth accounts. They could easily be titled Voting Booth 1, Voting Booth 2, etc.. though one could also get creative, and go with Voting Booth, Polling Place, Cast Yo Ballot Here, and so on and so forth in that manner.
Most of the time we wouldn't need to make use of them, but I think the current election and special election mess is demonstrating some problematic side effects. Specifically, I'm concerned that there are citizens who feel that they cannot run in an election for which they are not an appointed election commissioner, because they are serving as an election commissioner in another election and would have access to private ballots for their own election.
There is nothing in the law that prevents them from running anyway, but a number of people have expressed concern over that possibility. As a result, we currently have the silly situation of an EC for the judicial election encouraging people to vote RON for the AG election in order that he might be eligible to run if nominations are reopened... while at the same time, the single candidate in the judicial election is encouraging people to vote in favor of RON in the hopes of drumming up some competition! This is likely to both seriously delay filling an elected official position, and could result in fewer candidates than actually want to run.
This is clearly Very Bad No Good, and I think introducing two (or potentially three, in the event of the supremely unexpected) alternate voting booth accounts would address the problem. They would go unused unless more than one election were to be held concurrently. In that case, each election would be assigned a Voting Booth account to use for private ballots, and the ECs would have access to only that one.
Thoughts?
Most of the time we wouldn't need to make use of them, but I think the current election and special election mess is demonstrating some problematic side effects. Specifically, I'm concerned that there are citizens who feel that they cannot run in an election for which they are not an appointed election commissioner, because they are serving as an election commissioner in another election and would have access to private ballots for their own election.
There is nothing in the law that prevents them from running anyway, but a number of people have expressed concern over that possibility. As a result, we currently have the silly situation of an EC for the judicial election encouraging people to vote RON for the AG election in order that he might be eligible to run if nominations are reopened... while at the same time, the single candidate in the judicial election is encouraging people to vote in favor of RON in the hopes of drumming up some competition! This is likely to both seriously delay filling an elected official position, and could result in fewer candidates than actually want to run.
This is clearly Very Bad No Good, and I think introducing two (or potentially three, in the event of the supremely unexpected) alternate voting booth accounts would address the problem. They would go unused unless more than one election were to be held concurrently. In that case, each election would be assigned a Voting Booth account to use for private ballots, and the ECs would have access to only that one.
Thoughts?
