OK everyone,
Let's hear your election day experiences and reports! I voted a month ago by absentee ballot but if I can get away from the office this afternoon I'll be volunteering at the local Democratic party HQ.
US west will be a poll worker again.
I'm guessing that Bell Curve will be either sleeping, changing diapers, writing his dissertation or eating. DON'T FORGET TO VOTE BELL CURVE!
LTG? Dr. S?
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Election Day Reports
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 5:17 AM
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CNN is reporting that there are already long lines at the polls in Columbus, OH. Columbus is a swing area that has been trending heavily Democratic this cycle.
// posted by RBR
Bell weather race to watch: OH-12. If Shamansky beats the incumbent Republican, Tiberi, look out GOP. This district is a combination of uber-rich suburbs like New Albany and semi-rural ex-urbs. Then there is Westerville, the home of the prohibition movement and one of those towns where a lot of evangelicals live. Majoritywatch.com has this race with a 5 point Republican lead. That's very close given this district.
// posted by RBR
I voted three weeks ago. In CA, we are about to re-elect a Republican governor, so this place is totally out of step with the rest of the country. Of course, he also enacted far-reaching global warming legislation, agreed to raise the minimum wage to $8/hour, and agreed with the Dems in the lege to work for statewide prescription drug discounts. Almost every constituency has been appeased, and the Democratic candidate, Angelides, has not managed to differentiate himself on any angle except having way less charisma and supporting gay marriage. Of course, even Arnie went out of his way to say he vetoed the gay marriage bill on a technical ground, not because he's anti-gay, rather than pandering to the bigot vote (i.e., Orange County and the Central Valley). So, as we say, what-EVER....
Report of long lines in Columbus this morning is bad if it deters voting this afternoon.
// posted by LTG
I'll definitely vote this morning. Thankfully no electronic machines here. Good ol' Ink-a-vote.
// posted by Bell Curve
Ah, yes... not a electronic voting, but Ink-a-Vote. Which then later gets read in by an electronic voting machine. Personally, I'd rather enter my data into the machine directly than go through a punchcard or scantron-type interface... we just need to make sure there is a good paper trail too.
I'll be sitting at home, in the dark, in cold sweats, trying to resist my polling addiction. Just kidding--I'm off to work. I voted by mail ("absentee") a couple of weeks ago. As RbR mentioned in an offline conversation yesterday, if the polls truly are tightening, then the record number of mail-in votes from a slightly earlier time-period should give the Dems a small boost.
My fingers are crossed. Oh, and don't read the NY Times until the results come out. The articles there are demoralizing. What's wrong with those people?
The press wants there to always be a close race. Electoral blow outs are no fun for them. Yet another reason why the education and training of journalists has largely failed us (subject for another post some day).
// posted by RbR
I just went to vote. Nothing to report except it's frickin' HOT outside! To think, some people have to trek through the snow today.
After this election, I think this blog should become a major proponent of the vote by mail system they have in Oregon. Hard to list all the problems it would fix.
// posted by Bell Curve
... or at least to have election day declared a federal holiday. That would help a lot too.
// posted by Bell Curve
I drove a guy to the polls this afternoon. Then I went to knock on doors for a couple of hours. I was in a more or less blue color neighborhood. Most of the route was uneventful but in front of one apartment building a large, drunk white man sitting on a motorcylce threatened me that I would "regret it" if I entered any of the buildings in that complex. Rather than press the issue I just went to the next street.
Now, I've gone door to door in some pretty tough neighborhoods in LA (Crenshaw) and never been threatened or even really felt in danger. But go into one neighborhood with Republicans in it and I get threatened with violence.
The rumors in my district are that turnout is through the roof (temp is 60 with partly cloudy skis).
// posted by RBR
I started my day at 5 am. I was all the polling place by 6. By 7 am (polls open) we had 30 people in line. We had 6 voter machines for two precincts. (In our county, we have consolidated precincts.) Two of our machines couldn't be plugged in for the first 2 hours because we needed a 3-pronged plug and didn't have one. That is how messed up things can get. You can daisy chain up to 4 together, but it isn't recommended that we do more than that. Then we had one machine frozen. So the line got pretty long. But everyone stayed very patient. We managed to finally have a plug adaptor delivered. And we ended up with 6 running machines. We had a line of varying lengths nearly all day.
By closing time, we were down to 2 running machines. We ran out of paper on the printers or 4 of our machines and the county was out of extra printers. This is the first time this has happened in the 3 elections I have worked. And the county told us that we were one of the lucky precincts because others were a lot worse off. Our line got very long at around 5-7. Polls close at 8 pm. We had voters up to the last minute.
We had everything closed, accounted for, and done by 9:30.
Why did we run out of paper so soon on the printers? Well, the ballot was long and took 3 pages to print off. The machines print 2 copies. The first is a review for the voter to see what the machine is registering as his vote. If he is satisfied, then he casts his official ballot and a second copy is print. If he has made a mistake after seeing the paper review, he can change it and re-print. So if mistakes were made, then that was even more paper used!
Why the longer lines? We noticed that people spent a lot more time at the machines voting this time than in the past. I think that was in part due to the importance of this election and the complexity of the ballot with all the propositions, local measures, city council races, etc.
Second, I think we had a lot more voter participation this time. It was an important election and the weather was beautiful. So more people were out and about.
So that was my day. Long, but good.
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