Help America Vote Act can hurt small towns

Opinion    Sioux City Journal    19 May 2005

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) Helping America vote hurts some people in the Fillmore County towns of Strang and Ohio.

There are no polling places there anymore, nor in the Thayer County towns of Gilead, Belvidere, Hubbell, Byron and Carleton.

Neal Erickson, Nebraska's deputy secretary of state for elections, blames a looming, Jan. 1 deadline and the many requirements of the federal Helping America Vote Act of 2002.
  

The state has already lowered precinct numbers to 15,000 from about 16,500.

Nebraska was one of more than 40 states had to registration systems to comply with the act, so county records are being transferred to new software that will link voter registration with those in other state agencies.

The act also requires that handicapped people be accommodated so they can vote privately, without assistance.

That will cost several thousand dollars each for new voting machines.

So the secretary of state's office has been asking counties whether their polling places efficiently serve voters and taxpayers.

From many small towns in many rural counties, the answers are "no."

Cherry County and its 6,000-plus inhabitants provide an example.

Should it spend $3,000 to $5,000 to place a new machine at a rural polling place in a one-room rural school? It serves a very few voters, but they have to drive 40 miles one way just to get there.

Eliminating that spot might save tax dollars but also could double the distances some voters would have to travel. Would they still make that civic journey?

Thayer County Clerk Marie Rauner said the polling place consolidations in Alexandria, Bruning, Chester and Davenport were unhappy decisions.

"I don't like to do that very often," she said, because it does generate hard feelings.

A new law will give some counties an option.

With Gov. Dave Heineman's signing of LB401 last week, officials in counties with fewer than 7,000 people may now conduct elections entirely by mail.