No, and why would they?
The only reason they really need one is to satisfy the AG. Not the voters - the AG. That’s not on them for lacking a website. That’s on the state for a ridiculous requirement.
The law is certainly on them, and if only 5 percent are not complying it can’t be that ridiculous, can it?
Do we know that they were satisfying the voters? There’s good reason for a law like that: The people must be informed about elections, or there’s no reason to expect that voters are truly representative of the population. And you shouldn’t expect citizens without children in school to be following the school website.
Nor is this the only reason why the county government should have a website. A county that small might be doing a lot less than a big, urban county, but they’re still doing something, and whatever it is, good government demand that they keep the people informed on what it is. They might not have a fancy, flashy, pretty website, but it’s really cheap and easy to put up a simple, functional one.
I think the blame for this one falls squarely on the county.
My son is taking a half year high school course where one of the requirements is to setup a website.
These people want to borrow $4M and a requirement that they setup a simple website to communicate with the voters who will own that debt is ridiculous?
It certainly can be ridiculous.
As I noted earlier, somebody setting up a slapdash homebrew page for the official county website is not really sufficient. Sure, back in the early days of the web, I set up a webpage as well as part of a course assignment (hand coding in HTML, no less). No way it would have been good enough to serve as an official government site.
As mentioned (repeatedly), the county made the details on the bond issue available on the local school website and through the local newspaper, which they had done for years to this point. Apparently this is no longer good enough.
Apparently it was officially changed because it obviously wasn’t good enough.
Maybe, maybe not. But do you know what’s definitely not good enough to serve as an official government site? No site at all. Even a slapdash high-school-level site would be far better than what they currently have.
And by the way, with all of the user-friendly tools and templates that are out there now, a modern slapdash high-school-level site would still look a lot better than the one you made “back in the early days”. It might even look better than a professional site from back then.
Tell that to my cousins in rural Arkansas whose professionally made and paid for slapdash county website (where some citizens pay for some of their utilities) is so screwed up that the staff at the county office berated them for using it instead of coming in and paying in person as they apparently were told “they should have already known”.
That’s not counting the ransomware attack that trashed the previous version, of course.
Nothing at all would actually have been literally better than that dumpster fire.
Not that I agree with the AG’s decision, but it shouldn’t be a big deal for the county to find someone with enough skill to set up a basic website cheaply. It doesn’t have to win awards.
Then they should be able to complete required notifications and get a bond issue on the ballot in short order. It looks like you can have them in KS in non-general election years. It’ll likely be approved like the last one and they can fix/put up new buildings so the kiddies won’t be exposed to the elements.
Problem solved.
On thinking about this some more… The school district (which is part of and smaller than the county) did have a website, as well as someone who was capable of putting things up on it. So get whoever maintained the school website to do one for the county, too (of presumably the same quality, which was presumably acceptable for the school). Total cost, an hour or two of their time, plus twenty bucks a year for the domain registration.
As a data point of 1, I lived in Kansas in 2000 and was surrounded by farmland. My nearest neighbor was a good drive away. It was pretty damn rural.
My main source of entertainment was playing EverQuest.
I can only imagine 25 years later, it hasn’t gotten harder to get internet access.
I’d like to think that if a state government mandates a website then the state should provide guidance and possibly support regarding what is and is not suitable. Heck, they could provide a generic template off their own domain (Kansas gov/IttyBittyCounty) with minimal functionality to meet the legal requirements for posting election information. Hand out a username/password to place new entries to the designated country people and you’re good to go.
But that’s a silly idea, because it suggests that the purpose of government is to serve the people they govern and provide services and resources that lower level governments or individuals cannot efficiently do on their own.
That’s just crazy, right? I mean, who could possibly want that? /S
It sure is a good thing that all the bad ones were grouped together like that.
Right?
I would go to a local school* and ask a random child if they want $10 for a few minutes work.
Instant website. It really is that simple.
(Plus domain registration and hosting costs, which are pretty trivial)
* well, no, I wouldn’t, as I can do a fine job of clicking a button to install Wordpress, clicking another to setup a free theme, etc, all by myself. And I would charge a shit-ton more that US$10.
It doesn’t though. Here is the law that the decision was based on.
From what I am reading here, the law does not at any point mandate a website. It assumes that a website exists. I searched for the term “website” (which appears 21 times) to see if anything requires it to exist, and it doesn’t.
It’s like saying that anyone who runs for public office needs a note from their Aunt Mildred; it doesn’t say they have to have an Aunt Mildred, it just assumes they do.
And if I’m reading it right, cities cannot hold elections of any kind without a notice on the elections website, which I would wager is some violation of the Kansas state constitution. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like you can’t just declare that until you have a website to post notices on, you can’t hold elections.
I’d argue that the way the bill is worded, it says that if a website exists you are required to post notices on it, and failure to do so invalidates elections, but until you also add a requirement for a county elections website (and define what that means) then there is no violation of the law. I mean, what is to stop the county from saying that one of the websites that it posted to is the county elections website? If there is no official requirement for it, how can the AG claim they didn’t?
This fails a very simple common sense check, and though I’m not a lawyer I don’t think I have to be to point out the easy logical mistakes being made here.
That same thought crossed my mind. Greeley County says to the AG “The USD 200 website is our official county website.”
The law reads
Notice of the election shall also be published on the website of the county election office of any county where the election is to be conducted.
I am still going to argue that if the county doesn’t have a website, then no violation has occurred.
Bottom line is that the voters approved the bond election. It should proceed.
Yup.
My town didn’t have one till fairly recently, for exactly that reason. Having one means that specific things need to be posted there, in specific fashions, and kept updated according to specific schedules. Though all of that’s presumably going to vary by state.
When did you last check your county’s and your town- or-equivalent’s websites? Is it part of your ordinary routine to check them every couple of days?
Just think of all the fun committee names Itty Bitty County will have.
Itty Bitty City Committee (they deal with the suburbs within the county)
Itty Bitty Pretty Committee (seasonal decorations, planters, park benches etc)
Itty Bitty Witty Committee (Education)
Itty Bitty Pity Committee (for residents and businesses experiencing economic hardships)
Itty Bitty Kiddie Committee (Youth Outreach)
If we need more, the jr high kids in the youth outreach program offered to come up with some more names. But they wanted to call the DPW the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee. I told them that could be offensive. Hopefully they’ll have a better idea for the Women’s Health Department. (That was a really long way to get to Itty Bitty Titty Committee).
Yes, but the journey was well worth it, even if I could see the payoff miles away. Well done.
A group of Assumption University students are facing charges for kidnapping and beating soldier after luring him to campus using Tinder in a TikTok trend-inspired attack, emulating the TV series To Catch a Predator.
Kelsy Brainard, 18, a student of the $70,000-per-year Roman Catholic institution in Worcester, Massachusetts, allegedly invited the 22-year-old man to visit her at 10.30 p.m. on October 1 so they could “try and hook up,” police said…
Upon arriving at the campus, a “mob” of up to 30 people “came out of nowhere,” calling the victim a pedophile and accusing him of attempting to solicit sex from 17-year-old girls
But she said on Tinder she was 18 (which was her accurate age).
And another example of something just mentioned a few days ago here: