You know, I was going to write a blog about the GOP primary and the math that it would take for Thom Tillis to cross 40%. Instead, I’m going to write about another chapter in the ongoing GOP war on competence. Once again, they have broken the old, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rule.
We’ve witnessed the utter incompetence at the Department of Health and Human Services. Aldona Wos and her team of misfits and political cronies have left families without food and drawn the ire of legislators from both parties for their inability to provide the most basic data about the department budget. And we’ve seen John Skvarla Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and his science-denying cronies side with businesses instead of citizens, leaving out air and water vulnerable while holding no one accountable. Now, it’s the state board of elections.
For years, the state board has made access to election results and voter participation easily accessible. Now, they can’t even get that right. They’ve scrapped a system that worked and replaced it with a system that doesn’t.
It’s a simple issue. I wanted to know how many people voted in the GOP and Democratic primaries for US Senate in 2010. So I went to the SBOE web site, chose to “Election results,” chose “2010 primary,” and chose “US Senate-Dem (Dem).” First, the Democratic primary is listed twice in the pull-down menu. Then, each candidate’s name is listed twice with different totals each time it’s list. And there is no total vote. Same problem for the Republican primary.
The old SBOE site looked modern and inviting with the current voter registration figures, broken down by party, scrolling across the top. The new site looks like the web circa 2002. There is less information and what is there is wrong. It certainly doesn’t instill confidence.
Granted the health and well-being of our most vulnerable citizens and protection of our air and water deserve more attention, but easy access to voting figures should be part of their long-forgotten transparency pledge. It’s just another example of the incompetence of the executive branch. In what was probably an ill-planned attempt to save money, they’ve once again broken something that worked.
While voter statistics may only be important to nerds like me, this is the agency that’s going to overhaul our entire voting system. If they can’t even get something as simple as past election results right, how in the world are they going to implement the voter suppression program passed by the general assembly? Voting is upon us. Get ready for the next GOP debacle in North Carolina.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
The government agency ops strategy and approach from the NCGOP has become clear. Announce that an agency is “broken,” then appoint an incompetent as its leader, cut its budget, slash its veteran/expert staff, and outsource basic functions to “favored” contractors, such that said agency gets disorganized and unproductive, and as such, does indeed appear to be “broken,” and frankly now is. And even if an agency’s budget/staff/functions aren’t savaged by cuts, change enough things that did indeed work so that those things don’t work well anymore—again, reinforcing the GOP mantra that “government doesn’t ever do anything well.”
One difference with this particular issue at the SBOE is that messing up such basic processes as public access to voting data will hinder enlightened analysis and discourse about the impacts of the new voter law. Might that be something that the NCGOP welcomes? If so, and if screwing with easy public access to voting data is being deliberately done, we are truly in sad and scary times here in NC.
Glad someone is finally talking about this. It’s outrageous how less functional the site is now. Most disturbing is that the old version is still active!
Here is 2013 muni results in the old layout http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/48662/123095/Web01/en/summary.html
Why, sir, are you the least bit surprised? If you make something so frustrating and so complicated that it dissuades any attempt to use it, might one not succeed in curbing any dissent through dissemination of that information?
Control. It’s all about control. When you can vote, what time you can vote, and then, you can only vote if you can produce a valid ID. And voting is fundamental to the democratic process. How hard will it be to determine if voter ID laws have an adverse effect on voter participation if you can’t access the information? It’s almost as if they don’t want participation in the system; these self-proclaimed protectors of democracy.
Amen.
The “new” State Board of Elections web site is less intuitive and just plain doesn’t work.
NCGOP leadership: Making citizenry worse