There is some talk that Missouri may be the Florida of 2006, so perhaps a resident of the Show Me State should start the fun.
So I go to the polls in suburban St Louis County. At 7:45 a.m. there is a small, but growing line of voters, and I am the 98th person to get a ballot. I tell the poll worker [in a voice loud enough for other voters to hear] that I do not trust the touch screen voting system as the source code is the proprietary property of the company supplying the voting systems and we have no idea what the program will actually do.
I am told that I can use the fill-in-the-blank optical reader system, instead of the touch screens. I would decide to do this anyway since the touch screen line has now grown to about 7 people.
So I mark my 20 or so little ovals, put it in the ballot box and notice that I am the 25th [out of 98 who have received ballots] voter in my precinct to take advantage of the optical scan rather than touch screen.
There is now a line out the door of the polling place, and it seems like no one is completing the touch screen voting process quickly.
Yeah these touch screens are much faster and easier than the old system of punch cards that was not broken.
I voted this morning and used a touch-screen system. We didn’t have scads of races or referenda in PA (four races and one referendum), so it wasn’t that complicated.
Already reports of irregularities from all over. I just wonder if we are suffering from an observational bias. There have been shenanigans on both sides throughout history, and this will never totally cease, but now every small slight or delay (God forbid, anyone should have to wait a few minutes in line :rolleyes: ) is construed to be a calculated suppression of votes.
That’s not quite right. As I explained in my post in GD, the machine does print a paper copy of your ballot that you can verify. I suppose it’s possible that the paper copy could later be destroyed or otherwise mishandled, but the same could be said of a conventional ballot.
I voted in northern suburbs of Chicago – strong Repub effort to unseat Democrat Melissa Bean. The OCR machine crapped out at 6:05 so we had to deposit our ballots in a “bin” under the machine. Hopefully they’ll be read in whenever they get the machine fixed. At least I didn’t hear a shredder noise…
Absentee voted last weekend. Assuming they actually count my ballot, absentee is totally great - In the privacy of my own home, I’m free to yell comments like “take that, mofo!” and “feel the pain, bitch!” as I cruelly mark in my oval. Who says voting is no fun?
I can’t answer for MsRobyn, but for me it felt great. I’ve been looking forward to voting against that douchebag for weeks. I only wish I could have voted for Murtha. His district ends a couple of miles northeast of me.
We had a choice of optical scanner or touchscreen. I used the optical scanner ballot because the line seemed shorter, and I could actullly fill out the ballot while wating in line for a privacy booth – which I ended up not needing to use.
My observation on the touchscreen system is that it does take a bit of instruction the first time through. I needed instruction when I voted in the primary a few months back. I think the lines today are the result of so many people using the touchscreen system for the first time and needing the extra help. It will take a few elections for the process to run as smoothly as it used to.
Voter in KCMO checking in. Bit of a line at 0720ish, and the touch screen machine was on the fritz, allowing me the opportunity to not feel like a paranoiac by asking for the paper ballot. Mine was the 83rd ballot put in the reader.
And I used the electronic machine in August. Seemed fairly easy and straightforward. But considering the issues, paper seems the way to go. Particularly this time.
I’m not sure who makes them, but the touch-screen machines here (Santa Clara, CA) seem fantastic. You make all your choices, then they print out on paper behind a little window, you verify them on paper, and then hit “confirm”. So if everything else goes wrong, they still have a voter-verified paper trail.
I voted this morning before work, 3-minute wait or so.
Of course, nothing I was voting on mattered on a national scale.
Voter in Lees Summit MO checking in. What is this touch screen of which you speak.
My precinct only has punch cards for voting.
Still, I was disappointed not to find a punch selection that said, “lock Jim Talent, Claire McCaskill and 1000 very hungry chipmunks in a little room together and then throw away the key”. I’m sure it would have garnished a landslide vote from Missourians. The mudslinging that went on between those two idiots has pretty damn near killed what little faith I had in our political system.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to add an additional link with slightly more information about what has been (allegedly) said to the voters, namely that their polling places had been changed (when they had not been) or that it would be illegal for them to vote (when it wouldn’t be).
I voted about 8am out on the north fork of Long Island, and there’s nuthin’ new-fangled at all out here. We’ve still got the old flip-lever machines, and your vote is “cast” when you whang on the lever the opens the booth curtain. Supposedly this turns rachets and gears in a locked box that is opened and tallied… somewhere. Paper trails and accountability is non-existant.
Yeah. I trust these voting machines about as much as I trust the local politicians.