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Brown County Considers Expanding Places to Vote with Federal HAVA Money

Secretary of State Jason Gant doesn't think he can use Help America Vote Act money to give South Dakotans in Fort Thompson, Wanblee, and Eagle Butte more places to vote. But he's fine with spending HAVA money to give Aberdonians more places to vote:

Brown County officials are investigating the prospect of creating vote centers.

...If created in Brown County, the voting centers would decrease the number of Aberdeen precincts Fischer's office would oversee on Election Day.

Three voting centers could replace the 11 in-town precincts currently in place. Voters from any precinct could stop at any of the voting centers and cast a ballot, Fischer said [Scott Waltman, "County Commission: Officials Consider Voting Centers," Aberdeen American News, 2013.10.01].

Reread that: Aberdeen would reduce the number of places where voting happens, but instead of having to go to his or her local precinct, an Aberdeen resident could pick from three places to vote... thanks to help from Uncle Sam:

Voting centers would have electronic poll books that would allow election workers to scan driver's licenses to make sure a person is registered to vote. They would then print receipts telling workers which ballot to give a voter. They also would alert poll workers if somebody tried to vote twice in the same election. They would replace the paper voting rolls now used to track voters.

Federal money from the Help American Vote Act likely would be available to Brown County to help pay for technology if the county decides to implement voting centers, Fischer said.

So if spending HAVA funds is legit in a community where, if soup came to nuts, a majority of voters could walk to the nearest voting center, what would be wrong with putting one additional voting center equipped with the same modern vote-fraud-prevention technology in the middle of Fort Thompson to spare several hundred South Dakota voters a long drive to the middle of Gann Valley nowhere?

3 Comments

  1. Rorschach 2013.10.02

    Is your question rhetorical, Cory? Everybody knows why our Secretary of State won't use HAVA funds in Ft. Thompson that he would use in Aberdeen for more affluent folks with greater existing access to polling locations. Everybody knows. Everybody.

  2. Jerry 2013.10.02

    So obvious their hatred of Native people. They prove they hate everyone that is not like them. I think that the folk there in Aberdeen would have to prove that they are old and white to get to use the polling places. Folks of color need not apply.

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