Could Pulaski County be headed for an honest, reliable and trouble-free election in 2006, the first in memory for most of us?
The county’s new circuit and county clerk and vote commissar, Pat O’Brien, gives us some hope.
A random telephone poll by O’Brien’s office suggests that the voter records of only 12 percent of the clearly active voters are fouled up. That sounds awful, but it really is an improvement, especially from the 2000 election, when it seemed that half the voters who went to the polls had trouble.
The larger problem has been with voters of questionable status, nearly a fourth of the 265,000 names in the county’s official voter lists.
They are “inactive,” which means they seem not to have voted in several years (or maybe they did), but nobody knows why. O’Brien is trying to reach them, first by mail, to see what their status is.
Chances are high in this mobile society that you’re on the list for one reason or another. If you get a letter, respond. Don’t wait. Those who don’t or else don’t vote will be purged from the rolls in 2006.
It may have taken a federal consent order and, we like to think, an efficient new public officer, but something is being done, finally. There is hope for democracy in Pulaski County after all.
