Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Rockland County's Board of Elections website s****

Good luck figuring out who the state and local reps are and what your districts are. Rockland County's Board of Elections website is a mess.

The website says I am in these districts (I've changed some numbers to protect my privacy):
Election district - A
Congressional district - 17th district
Assembly district - B
Legislative district - C

The sample ballot they provide says my:
Rep in Congress - 17th district
State Senator - 38th district
Member of Assembly - B

Translating all this then:
- Election district is how Rockland divides up all the county districts.
- Congressional district on BOE website (= US Senate) = Rep in Congress on ballot.
- Assembly district on BOE website (=NY State Assembly) = Member of assembly on ballot.

So, my State Senator is in the 38th district. I am in Rockland County election district "A", Assembly district "B" and apparently, Legislative district "C". Got it? So can I tell who I can vote for? I know my US Congressman is Eliot Engel and NY State Senator is Tom Morahan. I'm not worried about who's who in the the major races but the local stuff is a mystery.

What a mess! The website is no help at all. It's just a jumble of numbers without any help in making sense of them all.

In small print on the lower right hand edge of the page is this: "Congressional, Assembly or Legislative district lookup click here". (http://www.co.rockland.ny.us/BOE/districts.html ) This page leads to a page of numbers. How do you figure out which ones apply to you?

Then it says,
"Don't know your election district? Go to Polling Place."

What the F? No link to a page that shows the polling place? (Suggestion: Either have that be the link or add the word "above".) There are a bunch of links above that; one says polling place. The page that link brings you to asks you for some location info and then brings you to page where your polling location is listed, and in addition, your election district which turns out to be the key to unlocking your info.

But trying to figure out the rest of the info? Good luck...

One poorly designed website.

People ought to demand info that actually helps. The state's website isn't much help either.

1 comment:

  1. You can say that again. The site didn't even have the polling hours posted on Election Day. And calling the office on the phone isn't any better. Before the elections, I called with several questions. Not only they didn't have the answers, but they never offered to find out and call me back. Are we, taxpapers, paying for this?

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