While volunteering for the Obama campaign in SC has been an incredible and unique experience for me, mostly what I’ve been doing in the last few days has been poring over data with OCD care. Everything in a modern campaign turns on data — vast, huge amounts of data. (We have attempted to reach out to well over 600,000 voters. Six hundred thousand. Not through TV, radio, or whatever, but through phone calls, door knocking, and all sorts of other personal efforts). So data integrity is critical — which largely means looking over several hundred records looking for errors and inconsistencies. I’ve been primarily responsible for cleaning our data related to polling sites and our own staging locations.
The thing is, the state of South Carolina provided only a fraction of the funding it usually provides for an election — this despite the millions of dollars of, ahem, tourist revenue the national event has brought into the state. In downtown Columbia there are even banners welcoming us to the 2008 primaries. (I’m trying to imagine that in Concord). So to cut costs, the state “consolidated” a number of precincts — as many as seven or eight — into a single polling site. Which would be fine, if the information had gone out clearly, months in advance. But head on over to the state’s official election commission website and you’ll find a number of incorrect polling locations.
It doesn’t help that the state’s association for election official bears this rather unfortunate and quite possibly inflammatory name:
The good news is that the candidates are all in the same boat on this precinct consolidation, though undoubtedly, as always, it will be the poor who are hurt the most.
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