D.D. 02/16/05

Michael Silence has a piece in today's News-Sentinel pointing out that the state is considering adopting "anywhere" voting precincts, allowing the local government to streamline voting and cut back on Election Day personnel. The intiative would allow country residents to vote any in centrally located voting centers instead of at their geographically-central traditional polling spots, similar to the system in place for early voting. I have a sense that political consultants and county-wide candidates (and me too) couldn't be more against this intiative. Currently, the methods used to target voters in bounds of geographic areas use queries of turnout statistics sorted by precincts. On Election Day when most candidates are worried out of their minds, it helps to gauge turnout geographically by completing a circuit tour of the county's major precincts. However, with anywhere voting, this system of guaging turnout would be impossible and methods used to geo-target areas of support would be made even more difficult. If precincts themselves were eliminated, it would be almost impossible to compartmentalize voters into targetable areas, with individual streets becoming the new segments. This method would cause problems in every area of a campaign from selecting random targeted polling samples, to reaching voters with important direct mail, to ensuring that key neighborhoods are incorporated into a GOTV strategy.