| Vote Early - Vote Often |
[Oct. 23rd, 2008|10:39 am] |
On the weekend of October 18th Bernalillo county expanded the number of locations for "Early In Person" voting. On Tuesday, October 21, I took advantage of that and voted early.
Although the place was busy, my total voting experience lasted maybe 35 minutes. That Monday's paper said that the wait time for some of the locations took as much as two and a half hours. I guess I lucked out by selecting a location that was relatively quiet.
The first part of my voting experience took place waiting outside the office door. There were about 15 people in front of me when I got in line. That first wait took about ten minutes. While I waited a women stepped out of the office and loudly proclaimed that she "voted for the right guy". She didn't actually say who she voted for but she made it clear she didn't vote for Obama. That ticked me off. I don't care who you vote for but proclaiming your preference outside the polling area shows a complete lack of judgment and tact.
When I got to the start of the line and entered the door, I was handed a clipboard and a form and asked to fill out the form. I filled in the information (name and address as it appears on your registration), signed it and handed it back. The woman checked the form, validated it (some time stamp machine), handed me back the form and directed me to another line.
The second line lasted another ten minutes and when I got to the head of the line there were four desks with computer screens in front of poll workers talking to voters. When one of the poll workers waved me in, I handed her my card and she quickly typed the info into the computer terminal. She wrote down my precinct number from the computer screen and then handed the form to another worker who then went into another room to get the paper ballot for my precinct. I thought that was pretty cool: having the ballots for all the precincts in one office. That meant I could go to any location to vote early instead of going only to one location for my precinct.
While waiting for the ballot, the lady pointed out to me the instructions posted on the wall on how to fill out the paper ballot. Pretty simple, just darken the circle for the candidate you are voting for. I've done paper ballots before. Pretty easy. These instructions were pasted on every wall in the place (wouldn't surprise me if they were in the bathrooms too).
The lady also told me that I was voter #16205 which meant 16205 people had voted so far in the early in person voting. That's pretty darn good. According to the paper, that was much more than what it was at the same time during the last general election.
The guy comes back, I get my ballot, I find an empty voting booth and I start voting. When I'm done voting I put my ballot in the ballot machine. On the machine is an LCD display showing the number of ballots processed by that machine. Once I insert the ballot, I'm supposed stay there until the number increments by one or the machine starts beeping, indicating that my ballot was rejected. After a few seconds, the LCD number changed from 514 to 515. One of the poll workers thanked me and handed me a sticker that said "I Voted" on it.
My civic duty as a voter was complete. :)
In addition to the loud lady, there was one other incident that made my voting experience more interesting. Just when I started filling in those little circles, one of the ballot machines started beeping. Someone's ballot was rejected. Sure enough, one of the poll workers tells someone that their ballot was rejected. The poll worker takes the voter to the vacant voter booth next to mine and explains to the voter that the ballot was rejected (the voter crossed the circle instead of filling it in). The poll worker gives the voter a blank ballot and tells him he'll have to fill in the blank ballot.
The voter responded by stating that he needed the old ballot because he forgot how he voted. The worker could not give him the old ballot because a voter could have only one ballot in his possession (I presume the old ballot was either destroyed or put into a vault or other safe location). The voter rejected this news and decided that he won't vote that day and he'll just wait until election day to vote. The poll worker tells the voter that it's too late, since his name was already registered that day, he can't vote later: he has to vote that day. Again the voter rejected what he is being told and restated that he wanted to vote later. This goes on again at least one more time until the voter decides that he wants to talk to the poll workers supervisor. After a few moments a woman shows up and the situation is explained to her. The voter restates his intentions to vote during the regular election instead of that day. I don't know what happened after that because I finished voting and I went to the ballot machining, hoping that my ballot won't get rejected (it didn't).
It's a week later and I still shake my head at the incident. That voter spent more time arguing than I spent at the booth voting. Why didn't he just cope with the situation by trying to remember how he voted. The whole thing begs the question: what process did he use when he voted on the first ballot? He obviously didn't bring notes. Did he just randomly picked votes? I don't get it.
After I voted I read about a woman who voted while drunk. She created a disturbance passed out with a bottle of vodka in her possession and police wondered if it was illegal to vote while drunk (it wasn't).
It's incidents like these that make me think that we deserve the leaders we get. Us voters are idiots.
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