New voter machines lacking a ‘none of the above’ button
by James Simpson

Potomac News
Friday, November 7, 2003

This Election Day was the warmest and driest I can remember. Yet turnout was still low. I shouldn't be shocked any more by the fact that we have the freedom to elect our representatives, yet so few exercise that right. I imagine that one of the reasons is a lack of decent choices. We really need a "None Of The Above" option on the ballot in every race. Another reason is probably due to people being outright disgusted with the whole process… all the negative campaign attacks, etc.

Even political parties are apathetic these days. Only 39 of 100 House seats and 21 of 40 Senate seats had any opposition at all.

In the interest of full disclosure I need to let you know that I am the Vice Chair of the PWTA. I know some of you are tired of hearing me say this, but when I failed to do so last month, Alfred (the Opinion Page Editor) was taken to task for this by one of our elected officials.

The Prince William Taxpayers Alliance works to secure pledges from candidates who vow, if elected, they will not raise property taxes by the greater of 5% or population plus inflation. By obtaining and advertising who has signed these pledges, the PWTA hopes to provide citizens a good reason to vote for a pledge signer over a non pledge signer.

There are now two pledge signers on the Board of Supervisors and three pledge signers in the General Assembly from Prince William County. The pledge taken by state level candidates was created by Americans for Tax Reform, and focuses on not raising taxes in general.

On the other hand, we will likely still be facing unreasonable property tax increases this year due to the fact that six board members (four of them Republican) refused to pledge to voters that they would limit taxes. Of course, if they do vote to raise taxes then the statements "Lower Taxes" and "Smaller Government" which were printed on the Republican sample ballots handed out on Election Day will have been an outright lie.

After all, it has been a Republican controlled Board that gave us a 37% increase in just four years. If Caddigan, Connaughton, Covington, and Nohe decide to follow liberal tendencies and increase our taxes as Jenkins and Barg will undoubtedly do, then be prepared to fork up even more of your hard earned dough.

In a discussion I had with Chairman Connaughton a couple months ago he indicated that it would still be necessary to raise taxes at least 7% next year. So you tell me if this meshes with the "Lower Taxes" statement.

If Prince William County Republicans wanted to "do the right thing" they wouldn't worry about kicking someone out of the party for exercising their right to individually endorse whoever they wish to in a particular race, they would kick out members who didn't adhere to the positions of "protection of the unborn," "lower taxes," and "smaller government." I guess for many folks it is more important to supress free association then to lose power by actually standing up for principles. However, I digress.

The Sheriffs race was no surprise. Stoffregen didn't seem to understand that the role of politics in the Sheriffs race should be limited to elections. Once the Sheriff is in office folks want politics removed from the job description.

One of the most interesting results was a race in Senate District 35 between Saslaw and Levy. To understand why I believe this was an interesting race you need to check out Mr. Levy's website at http://www.writeword.us/levy.html and then realize that he actually received 3537 votes.

We will be getting new voting machines before long, similar to those used in Fairfax County this year. One of the problems with the new voting machines that were used in Fairfax is that they are designed in a way that won't allow you to proceed without selecting someone for each race. I talked with someone who said that she didn't want to vote for Moran, even though he was unopposed. However, when she selected the option to register her vote the screen came back flashing with an indication that she had not picked someone for the 46th House District seat. At the time she weren't thinking that you could just write in "None Of The Above" to complete the process. This is something that needs to be clearly explained to voters, or better yet - design the machines to accept an incomplete ballot as you could in the old mechanical booths.

As of the time I sent this column in for publication, the vote totals were still "unofficial."
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James Simpson lives in Lake Ridge. His cyber home is jamessimpson.org.