Austin American-Statesman will not post precinct voting locations unless County pays for space..

[crispini]

THIS STINKS!

If you are in Travis, please click through, get the contact info, call them and GIVE THEM AN EARFUL! :bounce:

http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5170

[sonias]

1. I just called

And the person who answers Opel's phone said they were looking into it. He wasn't sure what the story was. I can't imagine that the Statesman would be that stupid and unpatriotic to hold up printing of the election day voting locations over money.

It's bad press either way. They better get ahead of that story and do the right thing.

Sonia

[crispini]

2. Info here

A letter from editor Rich Oppel on polling places
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Any reader easily can get to a list of polling places for Travis County and surrounding places on Statesman.com. Just go to the news tab at the top, then local elections. You'll see a list of links to elections supervisors' offices in six counties. All polling places are listed there. The information on these links is far more comprehensive than anything we've published in the past. Here is the link to our site:

Early voting and Election Day polling locations

We are also providing information each day on page B2 on how to get early voting information online and will do so for the March 4 primary polling locations after early voting ends. For those people without Internet access, telephone numbers are published.

We didn't publish polling places in the print newspaper in November 2006, and received a handful of complaints. We have scaled back on publishing polling places since 2005. The Internet has fundamentally changed how people access lists and other data. We — and most newspapers — have migrated many listings, including those for stocks, TV programs, entertainment and polling places, to the Internet, leaving more room in our print columns for active news and enterprise coverage.

We have more news reports today on the 2008 campaigns and elections than in any previous election.
more
....

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/02/28/0228oppel.html

I'm not sure I like that. Hm....

[sonias]

3. Yes, pretty lame

He's saying they can slack off on their civic duty because not enough people complained in 2006. Well hello Rich, that was not a presidential election year! And now that Texas is really going to be important you're going to sit it out and just publish it on the net. How patriotic of you.

Now you understand why so many of us stopped our subscriptions to the Statesman. Rich thinks everyone has an Internet connection, and if you don't well too bad!


Sonia

[cosmik debris]

4. At the risk of sounding repetitious

It's a Cox newspaper. The same people who publish Ted Nugent's column. Did you really expect anything better?

[efhmc]

6. .Actually, I do. For my many voting years, starting in

Richardson, then Austin, then SA and Houston and Austin again and now in small town Texas, the newspapers printed where to vote. I guess that serving the public is just not necessary anymore.

[efhmc]

5. Supporting that lame brain for pres did it for me. This is really a travesty

of their civic duty.

[Sailing]

7. Funny. They sure didn't have a problem

posting that quarter page ad in 2006, listing all the republican candidates everyone should vote for.

Guess they need someone to pay for that big concrete parking lot they are putting in after ripping out all that lawn. What an eyesore. Isn't it time to chase the Statesman out of Travis county? They sure hate us anyway.

[NoPasaran]

8. The Travis County Democratic Party Executive Committee

Tonight passed a resolution calling on the AA-S to print this information as part of their news coverage of the Texas Primary Election.

[GOPisEvil]

9. I expect Rich Oppel is getting an earful from the precinct chairs tonight/tomorrow.

We discussed this in the executive meeting this evening.

We came up with the "kill them with kindness" theory. Compliment them on their election coverage and suggest that it would be incomplete coverage without polling locations.

We also will have our Party Chairman deliver this message from the executive committee tomorrow.

I know Republicans are for low voter turnout, but this is too much.

Also, you do know that the County is REQUIRED to have this information published for the general election, so Rich Oppel is GUARANTEEING revenue in November. Not that it matters of course...