Yes, we are election geeks, and that is why we have been following the progress of “ROVER”, Riverside County’s mobile voting vehicle (which has reminded me a bit of the “urban assault vehicle” in “Stripes”!). Check out the slide show of ROVER’s construction and development here.

According to an article in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, ROVER is about to hit the streets of Riverside County. It is going to basically be a fully-capable polling place on wheels, with eight of Riverside County’s electronic voting machines. Riverside County is going to use this votemobile to make voting easier for those folks who live out in very remote reaches of Riverside County, as a quick look at a map of Southern California shows that Riverside geographically an enormous election jurisdiction.

First stop will be at the Morongo Band of Mission Indians’ Cabazon reservation, and from there the votemobile will head to Hemet, Norco, Wildomar and Blythe. I’ve asked friends and family in Riverside County to see if they can check out the votemobile for us, and if we do get any photos or reports from them we’ll let you know.

Apparently some other jurisdictions in Southern California have developed similar mobile voting platforms, and if any readers of Election Updates has any information about these programs — especially how many people actually vote using these mobile voting platforms and the extent to which they are cost-effective (ROVER supposedly cost $173,000) methods of “convenience voting” — please pass the information along.