Mobile voting precinct moves north to aid storm-weary voters
Hurricane Sandy’s timing couldn’t be worse for voters in the Northeast, but help from Print Elect in New Bern left early Saturday, rolling its mobile voting precinct to one New Jersey county to help get the votes in.
Hurricane Sandy’s timing couldn’t be worse for voters in the Northeast, but help from Print Elect in New Bern left early Saturday, rolling its mobile voting precinct to one New Jersey county to help get the votes in.
Ocean County Department of Elections officials in Toms River, N.J., which just got electric power back to their main office on Friday, contacted Print Elect CEO Owen Andrews for a voting solution for at least one of their polling place problems.
The county is currently facing executing a successful presidential election when many polling locations are still without power, evacuated, or flood damaged.
The mobile voting precinct, which debuted in New Bern in July 2010, is a 38-foot customized Winnebago with 15 voting stations and a two-person registration desk designed and equipped to function with a voting district’s electronic or paper ballots.
Print Elect, which has printed most of North Carolina’s ballots for more than 110 years and is the broker for most of its electronic voting machines, “researched and developed the MVP to be an Election Day problem-solver,” Andrews said. “In this case, Ocean County will have the aid of this versatile solution to help voters exercise their constitutional right in the midst of disaster cleanup.
“This mobile voting precinct was developed for things like catastrophic events,” he said. “With us living here on the coast, we know all about that.”
“The MVP is bringing Ocean County much-needed relief at a time when voter turnout and participation is key,” he said.
