A meeting of NorCo's Elections Comm'n that was supposed to take place at 3:30 pm had to be canceled because the Zrinski administration, which really runs our elections system, failed to post the agenda on the county's website as required by the Sunshine Act.
This error was brought to the attention of an Elections Comm'r by Matthew Flower, a NorCo GOP committee area chair.
It was canceled just four hours before it was scheduled to start.
On his Facebook page, he rhetorically asks, "If our county administration cannot competently schedule a public meeting, why should we believe they can take on the complexity of additional pop up voting, satellite election offices and expanded drop box use?"
He also set up the nifty little flyer you can see as part of this blog.
And that's the problem. The administration runs elections when that role should fall to the elections commission under both our Home Rule Charter and state law.
Despite the clear language of both state statute and our county constitution, all the elections commission really does is act as a rubber stamp for decisions made by the administration. They do serve one useful purpose. These unelected volunteers are usually the whipping boys (and girls) whom voters can yell at when the count administration screws up an election, which is now becoming something of a routine.
In the county commissioner form of government, the elections board consists of the county commissioners, and this makes sense. It is the county commissioners who both administer the county and pay the bills for election expenses.
It is time to amend the Charter so that the Elections Comm'n actually does the job it is required to do. Its members should consist of Council members who are not seeking election or re-election and the Executive, with one spot reserved for a member of the minority party. If it is an election year for the Exec, her spot should be replaced by a person appointed by the Courts or Council.
Then and only then will the elections commission actually be able to fulfill its statutory role.
And yes, I thin k Council members should weigh in on pop-up elections, which strike me as something far too easy to manipulate by conducting them in areas where you know your preferred party is going to vote. Moreover, given that the county has managed to send out the wrong mail-in ballots in two consecutive elections, it should master that first before branching off into something else. And yes, that decision should come from the Exec AND council, which is, after all, the governing body.
