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Give this idea a try to make voting more convenient

Staff Editorial, Northwest Indiana Times

One of Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita's legislative priorities for 2006 deserves serious consideration by the General Assembly.

Rokita wants to set up, on a trial basis in just a few counties, an alternative to the polling place in every precinct. Rokita, along with Porter County Clerk Dale Brewer and a delegation of other election officials, went to Fort Collins, Colo., recently to study the voting centers used in Larimer County.

The voting centers allow people from anywhere in the county, regardless of their precinct, to vote in the same place. A computerized voting list prevents people from voting in more than one location. For the public, this has the advantage of making the polling place easier to find. No more trying to remember what precinct you live in and where the polling place is.

For election officials, it means an end to the struggle to find poll workers and a site in every precinct that is easily accessible to disabled people.

Any given election in Indiana, which has 5,500 precincts, requires 30,000 poll workers.

Lake County has 500 precincts; Porter County has 125. That's a lot of poll workers.

Rokita's plan is to get the Legislature to have these pilot projects operate in the 2007 election, not a presidential election, when more voters typically show up.

The results of those test cases would then be used to determine whether and how to implement the voting center concept statewide.

The idea seems to work well in Colorado, and it is among the recommendations of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, a group headed by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Give it a try in Indiana.