Thumbs down: Voter confusion
Thumbs down: Voter confusion
Marion County Clerk Beth White has run more elections than any clerk in county history; the 2012 election marks her 12th. Each election, she says, something keeps her up at night. This year, it's her concern about voter confusion after Mayor Greg Ballard changed precinct lines and polling locations and co-mingled several precincts within given one polling location - five polling locations each handled voting for elections for five different precincts during the primary. "It's always true that people call and complain about their polling location for all kinds of reasons," White said. "In May what we saw was an intensity of that problem." Of the 295 voting locations used in the May primary, the clerk documented complaints with 19, representing 54 precincts (with about 10 percent of the county's approximately 613,000 registered voters). Marc Lotter, spokesman for the mayor, notes that some changes have happened since May to try to address voter concerns and that the list was released before the deadline to allow more time to educate voters about the changes.
