Exercising My Franchise
I got up early this morning, eschewing the usual two or sometimes three snoozes on the alarm, put on some jeans and a ratty t-shirt and drove over to my polling place to vote this morning. I realized as I got out of the car that my bedhead was quite spectacular, and that I hoped the little old ladies that run my precinct in Fairlington would still let me vote despite looking not a whit like my drivers’ license. But away I went, past the campaign signs in the school parking lot (how’s that work, exactly? Hi, I’m a candidate, can I put my propaganda up in your school? Yes? Sweet!) and past the cold looking Republican with a brush cut handing out sample ballots, and past his similarly cold Democrat doing the same.
I went in, identified myself, and cast my ballot on a little touchscreen computer. That concerns me, as it always does, because there’s no paper proof that the computer will see my vote the way I did, which is cause for concern in black-box voting systems. Oh, how I long for the scantron sheets I used in Alexandria in 2000. At least there was a paper trail…
Have you voted today? Tell us your voting story.
I live in DC, so no voting for me today.
But the mayorial electioneering for next year has definitely begun in earnest – signs popping up all over my neighborhood, “Think Cropp,” “Fenty for Mayor,” it’s going to be very interesting…
From my earlier post, it’s clear that I voted… but DID I?!?
Here’s the thought I left out. I walked in to my Cherrydale neighborhood polling place and they asked my name. I told them. She crossed me off (with a pen) on a paper SPREADSHEET, and pointed to the little booth where I would cast my ballot.
Um, really? How many times or places could I do that? No driver’s license, nada – she did ask for my street, but please.
Which, Tom, leads me to my confusion – electronic vote casting, but PAPER and PENCIL spreadsheets for voters?!
I ventured out in the wee hours of the morning to my polling place in Woodbridge. There were too few fellow voters with me. However, in a really weird twist of fate, one of my best friends from high school was one of the volunteers at my polling place. She was the last person I expected to see. Like Tom, I’m very leery of these new-fangled voting machines. There’s just too much that could go wrong.
I voted, but this time, they moved the polling place out of my apartment building and into one down the street. Man, democracy sucks…
Thankfully those of us over the Loudoun border are less ‘advanced’ – my vote was done on a heavy stock printed piece of paper where I marked my choices, SAT style, in a little bubble. When I was done I walked over to the man in front of a device that optically scanned the results and captured the sheet, presumably so it could be hand-tallied in case of questions or recounts.
My original intent will always be able to be discerned. Nyah nyah, suckers – enjoy your Diebold-chosen officials.