Issues:
Go do it!!!
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Comments
I did it today!
Let me tell you, getting a stroller to that 2nd floor voting room in Morehead Planetarium is no small feat.
Wondering
Was the elevator broken?
Strolling
No, but it took me a while to find it, and then to navigate our big, fat stroller through some tight spaces. I'm becoming more and more sensitive to the existence or lack of handicapped facilities around town!
Maybe The Independent Weekly
Maybe The Independent Weekly could do a story about improving the handicapped facilities around town. They could use their usual tiny fonts that only those with excellent eyesight can read without great difficulty.I early voted today too. I got there shortly before 1 pm, which is when they closed. Having regular election day be a weekday is inconvenient for those that work on weekdays so we have early voting. But then we have almost all early voting on a weekday too! Considerr the answer to the follwoing two questions: 1. For how many people is it more convenient to vote on Tue Apr 27 than Tue May 4? 2. For how many people is it more convenient to vote on Sat May 1 than Tue May 4?
Access for Wheelchairs, Strollers
Yes, it's definitely an issue, even though Chapel Hill/Carrboro are better than a lot of places on treating new parents and people with disabilities with basic equity in terms of access.That "Save" Bolin Creek feels the need to work so hard to prevent access to nature for parents and people who use wheelchairs tells us there's still plenty of work to do...
HUH
As far as I can tell that is not what they are working for.
Interesting points being
Interesting points being made I have felt for years that the Planetarium was not voter friendly unless you worked on campus or were a student. It cost the taxpayers to rent space for workers to park and is difficult for non-campus folks to vote and that is before you get to the accessibility issues. If the County is going to use only one site in the fall I suggest that try another site off campus for a change.
Off-campus early voting site
You mean like, oh I don't know... Carrboro? http://www.orangepolitics.org/2010/02/no-early-primary-voting-in-carrboroI think the Planetarium site is essential for helping student turn-out, but it's pretty inconvenient for almost everyone else. We need 3 early voting sites, in my opinion.
I will argue that the ONLY
I will argue that the ONLY time students turn out is the presidential years which we are not currently in. I also find it interesting that we are catering to such a small percentage of voters who are far more mobile that the rest of us.It has also been suggested that the Senior Center could host an early voting site.
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If you have time to vote on a weekeday when there's early voting then
getting downtown to do it is easy. There are free buses and park and rides.
If you don't have time, i.e., if you work during a weekday, then getting
downtown is hard but at least a lot of people are already in the area for their
job and they can vote before or after work or during lunch or whatever. I
mean, having weekday early voting but in areas where people aren't already are
is just silly. Yeah, some people are everywhere on weekdays but the place
where the largest number of them are is downtown / UNC.
Of course, an even better thing to do would be to have early voting on
weekends. You could have it anywhee then and it would be convenient for
people that work on weekdays.
I got another politician robocall today. How about banning robocalls
for specific politicians but having them on behalf of the entire town or county
to inform people when and where they can early vote? That would reach a
lot more people then putting it on a website or the CH News or whatever.
How about having all our early voting be in the days right before election
day? So instead of a day here and there, make it every day from Fri to
Tue or Sat to Tue, Tue being election day. We could publicize it and make
a big thing of it. We could encourage people to make it a part of a trip
to downtown CH. We could have free parking on those days and encourage
people to frequent restaurants and other businesses while they're in town
voting.
I've often heard people say that if we really wanted the voice of the
public to be heard at election time then we'd have elections on the
weekend. Well early voting is a de facto opportunity to do that and yet
we choose not to.
Ugh, I don't know what all
Ugh, I don't know what all that crap is at the start of that post and it won't let me edit it out. Sorry about that.
I t hink what happened
And I say this b/c something similar has happened to me on this website, is that when you type up your post in Microsoft Word (as I often do to avoid typos) or similar programs and then past it here, it includes that hidden stuff that shows up when you post.One way around it I've found is to copy it from microsoft word, past it into notepad which doesn't support all that hidden format stuff, then copy it from there and past it into OP.And then you avoid all the formatting mess. Unfortunately for this case, since the message has been responded to, I think you lose the edit option. But its a handy trick to know for the future.
For many of my undergrad college years
I didn't have a car, and was fairly new to voting, which is true of many undergrads. So they may still have mobility issues and other inertia related issues as it comes to voting, especially if its for the first time in their adult lives. But I absolutely agree with the sentiment of needing more voting sites. I say keep the Planetarium, and bring the Carrboro Town Hall back for the general election (as well as keeping the site in Hillsborough). If the budget allowed for it more sites would be even better, but realistically I think getting Carrboro Town Hall back is the best that will happen on that end.The last mayoral election was decided by about 100 votes, was not in a presidential election year (it was even more of an off year than this with no Senate candidate), and I'm sure more than 100 students voted.