Tuesday, March 04, 2008

double stubbed at the voting booth


so i voted this morning, and what a troubling experience it was.

first off, because of the chads, we couldnt poke the ballot, and because of possible hacking stuff, we cant do touch screens- and so we stood, filling in the circles like grade schoolers doing their iowa tests, voting for the best candidate

i then take my ballot to the box, and the worker-a very nice guy named phillip- tells me to rip of the stub, but the stub says "do not rip off". i point this out to phillip, who shows me his instruction book, and sure enough, it says to remove the stub....

afterword, i was very concerned my vote would not count, so i called the cuyahoga board of elections....turns out there were TWO stube, the first to be removed (which phillip did) and the second to remain (the one he had me remove).....the board worker said my vote would still count, stub or not

why cant they come up with a system that wont confuse the fuck out of people?! can it really be that far fetched to come up with something reasonable and safe?

Song of the day: volunteers- jeff moyer

3 comments:

HitThaFloor said...

I always vote about the same time of day and my precinct had heavier traffic then I'd ever seen. First of all, I had to find my ward and precinct, which wasn't easy since there was a big guy sitting directly in front of the map. I pointed out the difficulty and he just stared blankly. Then, instead of just 2 nice and neat tables, you had to find one of 5 or so tables and figure out who in the crowd you're supposed to be talking to. It was nice that I didn't have to wait for a booth, but even the GRE test is taken via computer nowadays.

How messed up......Plus what's with all the uncontested races???

Jeff Hess said...

Shalom Molly,

Listening to the radio this morning WCPN was not reporting heavy voting, but my experience at precinct 4M in Cleveland Heights the opposite.

In the past I've been in an out of the poll in 10 minutes. This morning it took me 25 minutes to get my ballot, stand in line waiting for a booth, use a ball-point pen to darken each oval (why weren't felt tips used, they would have been much faster?) and then drop my ballot in the box.

Neither stub was removed from my ballot. This is going to be a long election day.

HitThaFloor said...

I just added a comment to Jeff's blog: After I voted this morning, only 1 tab was removed.

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