Weber County's election follies
There are no comments for this page [ Add Comment ]Monday, November 26, 2007
If you want to start a fight, mess with an American's right to vote. It's guaranteed there'll be trouble in your wake.
But leave it to Weber County to put a new wrinkle in the whole voting-is-sacrosanct philosophy that's so foundational to the American system of governance: inadequate training of some election judges. That's the allegation made by a few poll workers since the Nov. 6 election.
As reported by the Standard-Examiner's Marshall Thompson last week, Robert Williams, a poll worker, said, "I personally think the training left a whole lot to be desired."
This was especially true, he explained, regarding how to deal with provisional ballots. "It was supposed to take three hours and it only took one," Williams told our reporter. "I got the training and I'm still not sure what to do about provisional ballots."
Granted, our reporter also spoke with longtime poll workers who disagreed, saying training was adequate. In most instances, that may be the case. But it's obvious that in others, the training was ineffectual. The proof of that could be seen when some poll workers were flummoxed when it came to dealing with provisional ballots.
And the chief reason so many voters -- more than 1,700 -- were told to vote via provisional ballots was that their names were not on the county's voter registry. (The infamous voter-challenge lists in Ogden accounted for about 150 names, or less than 10 percent of the total.) Weber County officials claim the state has not properly maintained the voter records. The state, in turn, says it's the county's responsibility.
It's impossible not to notice that other Top of Utah counties didn't seem to experience a similar fiasco with provisional balloting. If, as Weber officials say, the state is being lax in its stewardship of voter records, then it appears the state has it out for Weber County. That being the case, we doubt its veracity.
Weber simply dropped the ball. County Clerk/Auditor Alan McEwan needs to own up to his office's shortcomings and do some house-cleaning. After that, job No. 1 will be to make sure his staff's training regimen is improved before voters next visit to their polling places for the Feb. 5 presidential primary. If this nonsense happens again, the heads should keep rolling until the job's done right.
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