Election consolidation is a big goal here. Every little board - from a municipal utility district (subdivision sized water/sewer system) or a library district, or a transit authority, or hospital district, or... have to have elections to have board members and raise taxes. Also, in this state we elect our Judges - all the way from Justice of the Peace to Supreme Court. In my voting precinct, there are two school districts, three categories of city residence (fully annexed, limited annexed, and extra-territorial jurisdiction), and about 1/2 the houses are served by an Emergency Services District (Fire protection) where the others receive their fire protection from the city. Just a few blocks North of us has a similar mix, but a different Justice of the Peace district. just a few blocks East of us another similar mix, but a different county commissioner precinct, and just South of us a few blocks is a different State House district... Any of these board could hold their own election, whereever they wanted, simply by posting a notice at the County Courthouse. Instead, we try to consolodate them into a single election so that voters don't have to run all over town to vote. And the Legislative goal for next year is to consolidate election days as well. four years ago we had one election or another about every other month: January bonds, March Primary, April Primary Runoff, May Municipal, June Municipal Runoff, September bonds, Novemeber General. It's hard to drag people out of their houses 7 times a year for all of these elections, so if we can consolidate to just March Primary, April Primary Runoff, and November General that would make voting much more convenient. But it also increases the ballot complexity. If the Municipal and the General ballots were combined, there might be over 100 items on the ballot.What sort of things are you voting on that there's so many choices, and why are there so many different ballot styles?
Beware the new TTY code!
