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It appears that Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa and his Chief Deputy Tim Hurst are intent on making it more difficult for Idaho’s county clerks to achieve and maintain the integrity of Idaho’s municipal elections.
According to this Associated Press article* online in the Idaho Press-Tribune* November 10, 2011, Ysursa may ask the Idaho legislature to “… help restore early voting at city halls for municipal elections … ”
Right now, Idaho law only requires county clerks to provide one or more “…absent electors’ polling place(s)…”. This law explicitly states that it is up to “…each county…” (not the Secretary of State) to determine where the one or more absent electors’ polling places will be.
The news article suggests Ysursa will support legislation that will “…help restore early voting at city halls for municipal elections…”. If he does and if that legislation is approved, who will pay for it? Not the state. It will come from the county treasury of each county. Idaho has 44 counties and according to the Associated Press article, “In most if not all of Idaho’s 44 counties, the clerks had just one early absentee polling place, typically at the courthouse or election office.” But Idaho has 200 incorporated cities, each of them potentially demanding their respective county clerk establish an absent electors’ polling place in their city hall. Are the various boards of county commissioners prepared to budget for that?
The most fundamental questions should be, “Who is responsible for ensuring the integrity of the election and the voting materials such as unvoted ballots, already-voted ballots inside ballot boxes, ballot authentication stamps, poll books and records? How will that be accomplished?” When the absent electors’ polling place closes for the day, will the deputy county clerks pack up all the materials needing security and drive it back to the county’s elections office at the county seat for overnight storage? They should. No city mayor or city council should want to assume the responsibility for securing election materials; that is the responsibility of the county clerks.
Ysursa and others are making it sound as if having one absent electors’ polling place at the county seat is somehow depriving people of their statutory right to vote by absentee ballot. That is simply untrue. Persons in distant communities can still request and vote absentee ballots by U.S. mail, and of course, they can still vote in person on election day at their local polling place.
* Link and source updated 02-05-2012
Ben was the hand-picked successor to Pete Cenarussa who had done the Simplot bidding for 30+ years. he started out, as many do, as a good guy. Don Samuelson appointed him in 1967. But he was slowly co-opted by the Simplot machine and nursed Ysursa along and anointed him as successor. He needs to go.
Comment by justinian — November 12, 2011 @ 1:22 pm
Justinian
Ysursa was also the one who in 2009 told the requesting county clerks that yes, they could open absentee ballot envelopes early (sometimes days early), handle the absentee ballots, and flatten them so they would more efficiently run through the tabulating machinery. Except neither Ysursa nor Hurst bothered to read the law which explicitly forbade opening them until after the polls close on election day. It seems they just assumed that their general authority as state elections officials gave them the authority to situationally amend the law passed by the legislature.
I understand that Kootenai County Clerk Cliff Hayes complied with the no-peeking-’til-polls-closed law in administering the November 8, 2011, election, and as I recall there wasn’t a catastrophic failure of the tabulators barfing up fatally creased absentee ballots.
Comment by Bill — November 12, 2011 @ 2:07 pm
Bill,
Laws? Those are for the “little people” Bill, the “Pretty People” are always right. Ask JohnA.
Comment by justinian — November 12, 2011 @ 2:13 pm