Friday, December 30, 2005

President of NCACC Urges Governor to Repeal Elections Laws

Kitty Barnes, the President of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners is requesting that the Governor repeal the state's election laws.

Barnes is not only the President of the NCACC, but she's the chair of the Catawba County Board of County Commissioners. Barnes, a Republican, says the counties have not been given enough time to comply with the law.

"Giving counties less than five months to order, install and train poll workers on new mandated equipment could very well lead to serious problems on Election Day, and that outcome would certainly not instill the public’s confidence in our elections."


Barnes has good reason to be upset, but it doesn't have much to do with the lack of time left in which to comply. It probably has more to do with the fact that Catawba County officials ignored the chair of the State Board of Elections when he said to wait before buying new voting machines. Instead, Catawba County bought new machines in 2004 that will not meet the new standards. This results in a waste of almost $1.4 million.

VoteTrustUSA has a great article on this where they point out that the Catawba County purchase was bad for another reason:

Catawba County's purchase of voting machines was bad for another reason. A study of the 2004 election data shows that Catawba County's switch to new the Hart Intercivic paperless voting coincides with jump in undervote rate of 40% - 130% higher than it was in 2000.


There appears to be a lot of scrambling here at the end of the year to scrap or revise a law most voters want. I urge anyone who is concerned to contact Governor Easley's office and encourage him to stand firm.

To email the Governor:
Use this form

To phone the Governor:
(800) 662-7952 (valid in North Carolina only)
(919) 733-4240 or (919) 733-5811

To fax the Governor:
(919) 715-3175 or (919) 733-2120

To write the Governor:
Governor Michael F. Easley
Office of the Governor
20301 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-0301

This blog entry was cross-posted at
The Southern Dem

UPDATE: Oooops this blog entry was cross-posted at Blue N.C. So much for copy and paste.

1 Comments:

Blogger B. Muse said...

Adam - I am adding the blog as soon as I post this comment. You folks did a great job with your blog in the election this fall. Congratulations on your success. I look forward to seeing the positive impact your blog will have during future election cycles. Betsy

5:17 PM, December 30, 2005  

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