By PAMELA BRUST

PARKERSBURG — Wood County election officials won’t be losing any sleep general election night worrying about hanging, pregnant or dimpled chad.

Wood is among 43 counties in West Virginia that does not use the controversial punch card-style ballots. But 12 West Virginia counties use the punch card voting method, including Kanawha, the largest county in the state.

In West Virginia, three counties use the lever voting system; 10 use the oldest election system, the paper ballot; Cabell and recently Marion County converted to the newest method, the direct recording (computer touchscreen); 12 use punch cards; and 28 use optical scan.

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I am being billed for an account that does not exist.

My account was severed with AT&T long-distance in June.

At that time I changed my long-distance account to Verizon. I obtained the cancellation date by a call to Verizon Customer Service.

AT&T, however, did not cancel the account.

After a long call to a representative, I was informed that the account was canceled.

But, surprise, AT&T started billing me and while the amount is minimal ($39.79) it keeps on growing.

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By M. PUNONGBAYAN
TODAY Correspondent

The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) clarified that the P5.50 fee collected for every emergency call made through the police telephone hotline Patrol 117 will not be used to help the government raise revenues to help curb the fiscal deficit.

Interior Undersecretary for Peace and Order Marius Corpus said the fees collected from Patrol 117 will be used to further improve the services of the emergency hotline program.

The money will be used to increase manpower, train more personnel and improve operations and maintenance.

More than half of the funds to be generated by the scheme will go to personnel while 20 percent will go to maintenance and administrative expenses, and 10 percent for training, networking and Value Added Tax.

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