The College Park City Council asked its Board of Election supervisors to consider several new city election polling places – including an on-campus location – citing decreased voter turnout in districts without their own polls.
District 3 Councilman Eric Olson asked the council to examine as many as five additional polling places in several city neighborhoods and on the campus, using Stamp Student Union or volunteers’ garages if necessary to create more polls and encourage turnout.
Board Chairman Jack Robson said he would form a committee to consider additional polling places’ costs and feasibility and seek input from Student Government Association President Aaron Kraus and City-University Liaison Drew Vetter.
Only two of the city’s four districts have polling places for city elections, requiring voters in Districts 2 and 4 to travel anywhere between several blocks and several miles to reach polls in districts 1 and 3.
Voters on the northwest side of the city in District 4 must travel to Davis Hall – at the city’s east side off Rhode Island Avenue – to vote. Mid-town voters in District 2 cast ballots at City Hall, a few blocks south in downtown College Park. Most of the campus dorms and apartments are divided between Districts 2, 3 and 4.
There was a 3.1 percent voter turnout among the 1,938 registered voters from District 4 in November 2003 and a 4.3 percent turnout from District 2, according to city voting records.
Olson suggested several polling sites in District 2, including the Lakeland Community Center, Paint Branch Elementary School or Fealy Hall on Berwyn Road. He also identified geographically isolated neighborhoods in Districts 1 and 3 potentially in need of extra polls, such as College Park Estates at the city’s far eastern edge.
Robson cautioned having more than one poll per district could create confusion for residents unsure of where to vote and a logistical quagmire for election supervisors receiving voter registrations from the county.
With the advent of electronic voting machines, the cost of operating a polling place has risen to approximately $2,000 per voting machine per day, plus the cost of training election supervisors to operate them, Robson said.
Robson was skeptical of putting a poll on the campus, saying it would not serve other District 4 residents.
“If you put a polling place on campus, you’re only enfranchising one group: students,” Robson said. “If the SGA wants students to participate, they can pay for a bus like they have in the past.”
Vetter disagreed with busing students to polls at Davis Hall, citing only six students used the bus the SGA provided in the last city election.
Kraus formed a private company in September to file grievances against the city over the lack of student-accessible polling places, especially where underclassmen without cars on the campus live, he said.
He and Vetter plan to push for the board to include a Union polling place, which Kraus said “should have happened decades ago.”
Robson and the Board of Election supervisors will consider the locations and make a recommendation to the council by next month.
