{"id":20061,"date":"2016-05-17T08:01:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T15:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/bethel-to-keep-polling-stations-instead-of-mail-in-ballots\/"},"modified":"2016-05-17T08:01:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T15:01:22","slug":"bethel-to-keep-polling-stations-instead-of-mail-in-ballots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/bethel-to-keep-polling-stations-instead-of-mail-in-ballots\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethel to keep polling stations instead of mail-in ballots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BETHEL<\/strong> \u2014 When Bethel residents vote in the upcoming presidential election this fall, they will be doing so at a polling station.<\/p>\n<p>The Bethel City Council voted against replacing polling stations with mail-in ballots, though some members had suggested the mail-in voting could increase voter turnout, KYUK-AM reported.<\/p>\n<p>Council member Chuck Herman in March argued for mail-in ballots, saying the increased convenience of voting could galvanize voter participation. Voter turnout in Bethel has remained less than 25 percent over the past four years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just an attempt to allow those who wanted to vote but they had to pick up their kids from school, they had to work, all these myriad reasons why people can\u2019t make it to the polls and vote. It allowed them the opportunity to vote,\u201d Herman said at a meeting this week.<\/p>\n<p>But Herman\u2019s proposal drew criticism from council member Leif Albertson, who said Bethel\u2019s current voting system does not disenfranchise voters. Albertson countered that in addition to not solving a problem, it could foster voting fraud and allow peer pressure to seep into the voting process.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(Mail-in ballots) open up an opportunity for influence, for coercion that you don\u2019t see in a ballot booth when you\u2019re by yourself in a closed space,\u201d Albertson said.<\/p>\n<p>The council measure has been tabled until further notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BETHEL \u2014 When Bethel residents vote in the upcoming presidential election this fall, they will be doing so at a polling station. The Bethel City Council voted against replacing polling stations with mail-in ballots, though some members had suggested the mail-in voting could increase voter turnout, KYUK-AM reported. Council member Chuck Herman in March argued [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20061"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}