public relations

My state primary was Tuesday and, although I voted with no problem, for a lot of people in the county, voting was a complete fiasco. We've switched over to the Diebold machines here, and at about 6 a.m. the morning of the primary, the county election officials discovered that the secure bags they'd packed and delivered for every polling place didn't have the electronic cards voters need to run the machines.

It took hours for the cards to get to some sites - the elections office only has one thing to do every two years, they don't have a huge staff - and the polls stayed open an extra hour for voting on provisional ballots (in case a later court order said the extra time shouldn't have been allowed). In at least one polling station, they ran out of provisional ballots at the end of day and had people write down their votes on scrap paper. Yeah. It was that much of a fiasco.

So, with that background information out of the way, I come to my point: this story in today's Post. The headline says it all: "Bureaucrat Takes Blame in Vote Fiasco." This is the way to handle a mess like this. People have been calling for heads to roll since Tuesday. And the totally stressed-out dude who's in charge of voting in the county sat down with a newspaper reporter for three hours and took responsibility. No hiding behind county spokespeople. No shoving the blame off on other people. No getting defensive. (The reporter even remarks on that in the story - you can tell she was impressed.) No "no comments." (Ok, he did refuse to name an underling, but by then I loved him so much, I didn't care.) It's beautiful. He says he doesn't even care if he loses his job, just so we get through the general election.

If only more people saw the wisdom of dealing with scandals and fiascos this way. It's hiding stuff and lying that really pisses reporters off. I hope the county keeps being so open about it. And rewrites the manual for packing those bags.