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Elections, Voting, and RFP’s
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With election season right around the corner and the 2010 Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision allowing corporations, labor unions, and other partisan non-profit organizations to donate hefty amounts of money to political campaigns, political analysts and pundits alike are predicting the 2016 presidential election to be one of the most competitive and expensive in American history. Despite this increase in publicity and exposure, voter turnout has actually declined in recent years. In fact, a recent New York Times article reported that the 2014 midterm election saw the lowest voter turnout since 1942.
Many Americans are disinterested about participating in the democratic process and it seems that every politician, reporter, and media personality has the answer. They claim social media has made people apathetic and the news media has caused indifference by not informing on issues well enough. While these may be in part true, they miss opportunities to acknowledge and correct major issues with voting technology and election administration. For instance, the infamous 2000 election hand recount in Florida which resulted because of archaic butterfly ballot designs that confused voters and caused mechanical counting errors with ballots that had hanging and dimpled chads. As a result of this antiquated technology, many lost trust, faith, and interest in American democracy.
There have been great strides forward however, and voting and election systems around the country continue to improve. In the aftermath of the 2000 election fiasco, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 established minimum election administration standards and proposed state-of-the-art advances in voting technology. Since then, RFP’s have been coming out from state and local governments hoping to continually advance their voting and election management systems. The RFP’s request a broad range of services from high-tech voting systems to election management services and even real estate for election and voting operations. Information technology companies as well as realtors, project managers, and even consulting firms are likely to find opportunities of interest during the election from FindRFP.
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Read more Blogs on Government RFP, Bid, Contract and Notice
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