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It's your nickel

Submitted by James on Fri, 05/13/2011 - 3:48pm


Economically challenged Republicans in the General Assembly are so concerned about the high cost of early voting that they're making up facts to bolster their anti-democratic policies. Dave Ribar, professor of economics at UNC-Greensboro, sets them straight. From Applied Rationality.

  • Voting is a fundamental right. While it's hard to place an exact value on how much early voting contributes toward extending this right, it seems that it would be worth at least a nickel.
  • A review of the schedules shows that counties offered a total of 1,104 "site days" during the first week of voting in 2010. The NCGA Fiscal Research Division (FRD) estimates that each site cost $389 per day to operate. Using this figure, the average county spent just $4,295 (or $429,500 across the entire state) to accommodate the first week of early voting. Divided among the state's 9.6 million residents, the cost of operating the sites was less than a nickel per person -- literally pennies.

Please go read the rest of Dr. Ribar's blog post, and send it to your both your representative in the General Assembly and to your local newspaper. If you're unfortunate enough to be represented by a Republican, however, don't bother. They think you'd rather have a nickel than the convenience of early voting.

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Comments

Economists

Submitted by James on Fri, 05/13/2011 - 5:26pm.

If you don't read Applied Rationality regularly, you should be. It's at the top of the blog roll on BlueNC. Interesting that none of Art Pope's Personal Economists from NC State delivered this kind of analysis for the Taliban to review.

Preparing for the worst

Submitted by usna77 on Sun, 05/15/2011 - 4:00pm.

Let's assume that the Republicans will be eventually successful in their attempt to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of potential North Carolina voters. NCDP and progressive organizations need to start now to organize to get these potential voters to the polls. We need great organization to make sure voters have proper identification that the Republicans seem to want everyone to have, and we need to make sure that on the first day, and every day, of early voting that we are providing transportation to the polls, making the lines long at every early voting place.

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Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -- sign on Einstein's office wall.