[ScanIndiana] Loan MECA radios and MDTs for Election Day help ?!

[Daniel Heaton]

Loan MECA radios and MDTs for Election Day help ?!

Let me bounce a communications idea off on you.

I was a precinct inspector at last Tuesday’s election in Marion County.

We spent a lot of time on our PERSONAL cell phones to call the Inspector 
Hotline for voters who legitimately thought they were registered in my 
precinct and were not in the poll book, and when the tabulator jammed, or 
would not work for the first 20 minutes, etc.  I have a 25 minute plan on my 
cell phone.... so far no offer from the county to reimburse me... it will 
eat up my $110 pay which worked out to be $5.25 per hour.

The communications from the County Board to the precincts on Election Day is 
PONY EXPRESS.  Well ok I assume they came in there personal cars... but no 
phone calls, faxes, or other 20th or 21st century methods were used.  Two 
important memos were issued.  Six people in my precinct were mistakenly 
thought to be deceased and were now believed to be alive.  One made my heart 
sink, it said to remove half the information in the instruction manual 
!!.... was half of what we were doing for the first half of the day WRONG ?. 
  Luckily my book never had the old bad sections in it !!

MY IDEA:   Ask OFF DUTY police officers to loan the election board their 
MECA radios and MDTs (aka Mobile Data Terminals, aka Laptop Computers) for 
election day use in the polls.  The MDTs would have to be set up with a 
login that would allow us to access the county voter records database  on a 
READ ONLY basis, and would block access to criminal files, etc.  We would 
have to be set to a low priority as to not delay CAD dispatch traffic.  I 
think they have the capacity, MECA trunking went down during the tornados, 
but I think the MDTs continued to work.

MY IDEA PART 2: MECA radios.  OK I know that there are only approx 26 
channels on MECA 1, and the 900+ precincts would have to be told NOT to 
transmit unless there is a fire, or they need police with sirens sounding.  
Broadcasts from the county to the precincts would be the primary use, on a 
new talkgroup.  Maybe MECA 2 could be used in addition to or instead of MECA 
1.  The PTT radio IDs could be an issue if someone accidentally pushed the 
emergency status button.  They may need to list which officer’s radios are 
in use at which precincts.

We may not be able to get 900+ radios or MDTs, but several locations have 2 
or 3 precincts in the same building and could share, and smaller precincts 
could get one OR the other.

I plan to put this idea in front of Ms. Sadler, after she certifies this 
election and gets some sleep.  Overall she does an outstanding job, it takes 
some guts to put out those two embarrassing memos on election day... but she 
wants to get it right  !!

What do you think?

VOTE !!   VOLUNTEER and the POLLS... It was a valuable experience !!

Dan