Students waited out in the cold for hours to vote in the presidential election
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voters.
The search also had a limited time span. Establishing a new polling center involves a public hearing, a vote, and also approval from the state's Department of Justice. That process can take up to 90 days.
Wertz was directed to Tom Gabbard, associate director of athletics, internal affairs, to look at spaces the athletics department could provide. He was directed there by Sherwood Wilson, Vice President for Administrative Services.
Gabbard admitted to initial surprise at being contacted.
“Because there isn't anywhere else on this 2,000 acre campus to find a place to poll and I'm thinking 'that's illogical,',” Gabbard said.
Regardless, Gabbard began to show Wertz, and some on the county electoral board who would eventually have to approve the space, potential locations for the polling center.
Cassell Coliseum was initially an area of interest, agreed on by many as an ideal choice with a huge open space and easy access to on-campus students. According to Gabbard, Cassell had no space issues.
“Cassell would have been, to us, ideal,” Wertz agreed.
The basketball coliseum, located directly across from the main dormitories on campus and next to the McComas parking lot, was dismissed as an option on the basis tha parking couldn't be provided for voters who had to drive to the polls.
“If you came on this campus at 10 o'clock this morning and tried to park in that lot, you wouldn't find a place to work, ballot day or no ballot day,” Gabbard said.
The McComas lot, between McComas Gym and Cassell Coliseum, is used on a daily basis for staff who work at the athletic facilities, career services, student services, McComas gym and Schiffert Health Center.
“The only way you're going to be able to make that work is to reserve spaces before the day starts, and you can't shut this campus down for several hundred parkings spaces, which is what I believe (Wertz) was talking about,” Gabbard explained.
Both Wertz and Gabbard agree that specific number of parking spots was never mentioned in discussions, however, when brought up with Wertz, he speculated that the necessary spots would not hit a hundred, or even fifty.
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A version of this article appeared in the Nov 28 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Cassell is a perfect polling location for students. Parking for off-campus residents should be easy to accommodate in the McComas lot, the Lane Stadium lot, or the Chicken Hill lot. The ideal lot is probably the softball/track lot, since it's a decent size and can be gated off for one day voters w/o much inconvenience to anyone else. Handicapped folks could use the turnaround on the west side of Cassell, if that was a sticking point.
This really shouldn't be that complicated. Lots of people dropped the ball on this issue, especially since they had 4yrs to fix it. It will be an embarrassment to Tech if this isn't fixed w/in the next year, let alone by 2016.
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This isn't the university's responsibility, though, so it wouldn't necessarily be "an embarrassment to Tech." That being said, I do hope the administration will work with the local registrar on making the polls more accessible to students in the future.
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Cassell would be a great location. Of the thousands of students who vote, the vast majority will be on foot. The airport just isn't a good spot. I doubt that most on-campus students even know where the airport is.
If not Cassell, the Math Emporium would work: off-campus but convenient by bus, everybody in classes know where it is, and the parking deck is never full.
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The university embarrassment involves not accommodating elections in Cassell. We do Fall graduation there, it has a huge floor, and even those parking at chicken hill would have a short walk compared to on-campus student hiking to the airport.
If Wertz wasn't personally involved, I'd consider this voter suppression.
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Hold on. Randy Wertz is a Republican. Suppressing the college vote is in his party's interest as is shown by the Collegiate Times' student survey. Republicans benefit from student voting being far away from on-campus students, having long lines, and forcing students to wait hours in the cold.
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Did this article really take 3 weeks to write?
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Places on campus that would work as polling locations:
Owens banquet hall,
Commonwealth ballroom in squires,
Torgerson Mall (the room in Torgerson where blood drives happen.)
Those locations are relatively close to downtown and town parking could be used for the polling place or the strip of metered spots on Alumni Mall/in the Squires lot could be reserved for voters.
If it is to stay at the airport, the CRC bus should be advertised more. It wasn't mentioned at all in this article. It stops at the airport, runs every 15 minutes and is free for students. I see no reason for students to complain about the distance from campus when timely free transportation is provided.
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There is such an easy solution to this problem. Just don't include the off campus apartments in district. Then you only need minimal parking for the employees, maybe 5 spots or so. Those could be done easily with the practice facility lot, or spring street parallel spots. It would be a minor hiccup in the scheme of things.
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