Election training and information

Some things I learned at Saturday morning training for the upcoming election:

Buncombe County has 37 ballot styles for the May election.
Wake County has 180 ballot styles!

Part of this is due to the fact it is a primary, and part of this is due to the fact that there is a proposed Constitutional Amendment on the Primary ballot -- those citizens who are 17 but will turn 18 before the General election can vote on the candidates, but not the Amendment One.

The politicians in Raleigh put the Amendment in the primary because they think it will get more votes FOR the Amendment. This should be outlawed.

But the MAIN REASON there are so many ballot styles is all the gerrymandering that has been done with redistricting. They have split up nearly all precincts, and this is true for both state and national races. In some cases there are as few as TWO voters who will be in a certain US Congressional District inside their precinct. I think that negates a secret ballot right there, unless the TWO VOTERS happen to both vote and both vote for different candidates --- and there are only two candidates.

WHAT A MESS THE NC REPUBLICANS HAVE MADE!!!!

Oh, and all the claims about voter fraud? In the 2010 election, there were 6,000,000 voters in NC. And there were 40 cases of voter fraud, although at least some of those were just confused elderly people who voted absentee and then forget and voted again at the polls.

Another Republican "solution" searching for a "problem".... and a way to waste our TAX DOLLARS ON NOTHING.

Also, I confirmed that the paper ballots are HAND COUNTED in the after-election verification process. Four people are involved in this. The State BOE randomly picks precincts to count in EVERY county, and then randomly picks which race to recount.

And the differences between the paper ballots and the Opti-scanner results are nearly always due to..... VOTERS DO NOT FILL IN THE CIRCLE CORRECTLY!!

I am so very grateful for paper ballots and opti-scanners in our NC elections! I know a lot of people did a lot of work to get that outcome, and I am very grateful for their efforts.