Voting rants

[leight]

Was a poll worker for the first time yesterday. My district was the largest in our county 7k registered voters. We served nearly 3500.

We have to have a valid photo and signature id- on one like our drivers lic or one of each. We had 2-3hr waits because our paper ballots were 3 legal sized pages-two sided. I didn't have a problem with that. But I did think that the register books we use to verify someone should have been electronic. Alot of the holdup is that we had 11 inspectors who were each doing a section of the alphabet. Inevitably certain letters had very long lines and others had nobody. Would have been great if we could adjust computer registers to have an inspector checkin someone from the long lines. We had the cardboard voting booths- for 7k people they gave us 35. We had to put the ballots into privacy folders. Too few of them because people were standing on lines to get to the 35 booths. but it went a lot smoother than I am reading about happened in S Fl.

I just don't get someone not getting the absentee ballots here when they could simply fill it out at home- research the ammendments online while doing so- and pop it in the mail or at an early voting site. Not when its the same paper ballot at the elections site. I agree that there should be more uniform voting practices for our country.

I was happy to learn that for my little district- with early, absentee and election day voting we had 90% who voted.

 

[PenguinWaiters]

We had to show ID here for the first time. Not a problem for me but I am opposed to that for reasons already stated by others.

So our process was - show ID at the check in. My name and address were verified by me verbally (and then this time as compared to my ID). I think I also signed my name at the check-in.

I was then given a paper ballot and waited in line for an open booth which took about 5 minutes. We have had paper ballots for as long as I have voted. They are "fill in the oval" type ballots. Our booths are standing only with a small table to mark the ballot and a half curtain. We do not have privacy folders so I took my marked ballot and waited a few seconds to feed it into the machine. I always felt that was odd but mostly I stand there worrying I will put the ballot in the machine incorrectly although they always assure me that you can put it in any way you want. I also always immediately assume I marked the wrong ovals as soon as I leave the polling place, no matter how many times I double check them.

The worst part by far though was no stickers!

 

[Albort]

I didnt have to show ID... all you need to do is find out the address and the name on the property, u can basically go vote for anyone...

The problem with showing ID is that Voting is something a citizen dont have to pay for. If ID is required, the law states that the state must pay for everyone to get free ID. So this kinda throws the states off...

I think Pennsylvania was trying to do this so when they found hundreds of people trying to get ID cards from the DMV for free, the courts pushed it off to the next election.

 

[aprilgail2]

We are given the sheets in a folder - walk to a private booth. Fill the sheets out, back into the folder they go. Walk to the machine - there's no person standing there (they're sitting closeby if you need help or if the machine alarm goes off) - feed sheets into machine and turn the folder back in for someone else to use.

Simple and easy!

Same here but I don't even take the folder-I just take the paper that you fill out to vote- I don't give a crap who sees who I voted for.