After Election Day delays, report suggests improvements for Cass County voting experience

FARGO — The November common election in Cass County prompted some considerations when lengthy traces fashioned at polling websites on Election Day.

Now, a report is providing insights on how future voting may be improved.

Throughout the election, volunteers who had been organized by the ACLU of North Dakota, North Dakota Voices Community and League of Girls Voters of the Purple River Valley collected observations relating to how the election was carried out.

These observations had been condensed right into a just lately launched report that gives policymakers and election officers some concepts on how the election course of may be improved.

Total, observers discovered ballot staff to be respectful, useful {and professional}; points that arose on Election Day occurred at polling websites with the heaviest visitors, the report acknowledged.

The report additionally discovered {that a} handful of websites appeared insufficient in measurement or scope to deal with the excessive variety of voters, which highlighted limitations on the voting facilities — corresponding to operating out of paper ballots or voting area that did not present satisfactory privateness.

As well as, the report acknowledged that a number of observers observed insufficient signage at polling places, and there gave the impression to be a scarcity of election judges at busy websites, which may have been an element within the lengthy traces.

The report made numerous options on how issues may be improved, together with:

• Increasing early voting hours past 6 p.m.
• Together with Saturday hours for early voting, much like Burleigh County in North Dakota and Clay County in Minnesota.
• Bettering workflow for busy websites like West Acres, Atonement Lutheran Church and Calvary United Methodist Church.

The report additionally mentioned the county may think about posting merely worded directions at every voting station on the best way to vote with the specific voting machines so judges may spend much less time explaining the best way to use them. As a part of that suggestion, the report really useful calling it “contact pad” voting as an alternative of “specific” voting.
Following a assessment of the November election, Cass County officers have

focused numerous areas for enchancment.

Including extra vote facilities and growing election staffing in each metro and rural areas are among the many issues Cass County election officers are contemplating.

Apart from these steps, the county additionally plans to enhance communication on the subject of letting voters know the place vote facilities are positioned and the wait occasions they’ll anticipate at a given location, thereby steering voters to the websites with the shortest traces.

“For me, it needs to be our aim to at all times guarantee safe, honest, open, correct and well timed elections,” mentioned Cass County Commissioner Chad Peterson.

Peterson mentioned he and the county’s election workforce interacted with constituents earlier than and after the election, and he mentioned there was no scarcity of compliments and constructive criticism. Each of which, he mentioned, are “vital for me to listen to and carry again to our workforce to study from.”

Murray Nash, the county’s election administrator, mentioned shortly after the overall election the county sought enter from the teams that organized the election remark “with the intention to confirm the complete vary of views” on how the election went.

Nash mentioned the teams offered their findings to county officers in late November, and “there have been no actual surprises.”

“The county is targeted on enhancing the election expertise for each voters and election workers, and we’re investigating the problems recognized (within the election remark report),” Nash mentioned.