Sunday, November 28, 2010

D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics and the November 2nd General Election

The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics will hold a special meeting tomorrow, November 29, at 5:30 p.m. to certify the results of the November 2nd General Election. The open meeting will be held in Room 280-North of the One Judiciary Square Building at 441 Fourth Street, N.W. For more information the public is instructed to call the Board’s General Counsel’s office at 727-2194.

And the next day, Tuesday, November 30, at 10:00 a.m. the City Council’s Committee on Government Operations and the Environment chaired by Councilmember Mary Cheh will hold a public oversight roundtable on the administration of the November Election. According to the Committee’s public notice, roundtable topics will include the adjustments made by the Board in poll worker training and functioning of precincts, technological fixes, and the handling of electronic media, between the September Primary Election and the November General Election. The public notice further states that there will be a discussion about how those adjustments ameliorated problems experienced during the September Primary Election and what further adjustments are still necessary to improve voting in the District of Columbia. The roundtable will be held in room 412 of the John A. Wilson Building at 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Anyone wishing to testify should contact Committee staff at 724-8062.

It will be enlightening to hear about the “adjustments” made by the Board to “ameliorate” the problems experienced in September. Will they be the same or some of the same problems that the public brought to the attention of the Board’s Chairman Togo West and Councilmember Cheh? Or do those problems remain?