November 20, 2008
Go inside the MN recount and vote on what you think the fate of some actual disputed ballots should be. The ballots (and the campaigns' arguments) range from the reasonable, to the possibly understandable, to "what the hell is wrong with these people? It's a damn optical scan ballot for fuck's sake!"
OK, that's fair, but the OP did point out how there were reasonable mistakes, and then there was ridiculousness. I don't think our 'Lizard People' voter was confused.
The connect-the-line ballot is actually supposed to be more reliable than most (no misalignment, mislabelling, or non-entry problems). But I confess to nonetheless having a glimmer of the same nervousness the first time I voted in DC, which has the same setup. It's just absurd that there's so much variation, not just in ballots, but in voting regulations, election hours, etc., even within a single state, much less the entire nation.
Yeah. I'm beginning to be convinced that the Washington (state's) model of all-mail in balloting is the right method. If you're sitting at home with your ballot and a dinner and some coffee, you're way less nervous about things. You can either drop off the completed ballot at a polling place or you can postmark it by the election.
Oregon. And yeah.
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In a few of these I'd like to see what the rest of the ballot looked like -- specifically for "Ballot #6: The Checkmark", was the voter doing that on all of them?
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While canvassing, one of the voters I talked to was setting his Fantasy Football picks on a laptop when I knocked. He asked me to hang out for a second while he finished, then got his still-blank mail-in ballot from the kitchen table.
He'd never voted before, and I hadn't seen the CO ballot. First of all, it is *huge*, with the same muddled lack of usability as most. You are given pairs of arrows
and have to draw a line connecting them
He's nervous as hell that he'll do it wrong, and I'm nervous as hell even touching his ballot. I joked to him that "I don't want to be on the news tomorrow with Hannity yelling 'Some white dude came in this guy's house and told him what to vote for! Voter intimidation! ACORN!'" (To which he mock-responded, "You're white??!!?").
We went over the instructions and I finally grabbed a spare piece of paper, drew example arrows and demonstrated what to do. He did the line for "Obama-Biden" and and I could tell it was a pretty good moment. The Obama vote was all he cared about, but he asked if there were any of the others he should do (I bet a lot, lot of precincts saw ballots with a vote for Obama-and-that's-it, depressing somewhat the coattail effect). I told him there were a few others worth doing -- the governor race was mildly competitive, and there were a couple toxic initiatives. I briefly explained these, and pointed to where they were on the page, all while stressing repeatedly that he could vote or not vote however he wanted. He did those four initiatives and governor and president, then sealed his ballot back up in the envelope. I gave him one of the cards I'd made (my number, the voter protection number and the local polling place), and he called me on election day to let me know he'd dropped it off.
This guy was if anything smarter than most people, but had just such an overpowering amount of high-stakes investment (hope! change! black president!) and worry (they won't count our votes!) that I could absolutely understand how someone might decide to bubble in, underline, highlight, and draw giant radial pointing arrows indicating their choice. Anyway, you can be smart enough to use the Yahoo fantasy football page (and win a good piece of change on the previous week's games) but still be intimidated by an optical scan ballot.
posted by mrflip at 03:10AM CST on November 20