My Town Clerk has reported to the Secretary of the State that my absentee ballot has been received, along with those of my wife and son. The Secretary of the State has a website where you can look this up.
Our ballots were very simple this year: [Electors for] President & Vice-President, Representative in Congress, State Senator, State Representative, and a minor Town office. This is in Connecticut.
There is some wonderfully archaic language used on the town website to announce the election:
“The Electors of the Town of _____________ are hereby warned to meet at their respective polling places in said town on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, for the following purposes:
I. To cast their votes for Presidential and Vice-Presidential electors, Representative in Congress, State Senator, State Representative…”
Hmm. Interesting. I wonder what they do if you say you are experiencing symptoms or have a recent exposure. As far as I know, you can’t disfranchise someone for that reason. Would they bring the person a ballot but ask them not to come in? People who are ill not only still have the right to vote, but might be especially motivated at the moment.
I’m not saying they should be allowed in, by any means. I just wonder if the elections officials have a plan for a person saying they have symptoms and also that they still want to vote.
My town just announced the guidelines for in-person voting during the pandemic.
One of the required safety measures is to wear a mask. It then says that if you do not have a mask, one will be provided to you. If you cannot wear a mask, you should then ask for curbside voting. (We fill in bubbles on paper ballots that are then scanned.)
It seems like having symptoms or a recent exposure would be another reason to ask for curbside voting.
I didn’t ask; but that would be my guess. It was the last day to ask for an absentee ballot, so maybe they’d have brought out an absentee and asked you to leave it in a drop box; I would hope that on the days after that, when early voting was still open but it was too late to get an absentee ballot, that they’d just bring a ballot out to you and then let you hand it back to them. But I don’t know how they’d have managed the sign in for the vote itself, in that case – I don’t know whether the equipment could have been carried outside; it was electronic, not the old paper book.
A large part of the reason that I voted early was the fear that I’d wake up election day coughing or with a fever; or would have been called a couple of days earlier and told I’d been exposed and needed to quarantine. Maybe they’d have let me go vote anyway, but I’d have felt bad about it even if so; and, in NY, might not have tried (though there are a couple of downballot races that have just a faint chance of flipping a seat in the House and/or in the State Senate.)
I went today to my designated early voting location in Brooklyn.
Gotta say, the city has this organized and working brilliantly. Some locations have reported long lines to get in, but it seems that once you’re in, everything is working well.
Locally, neighborhood word was that the lines could be long early in the day, just after opening, but get much shorter later in the day. That’s probably due to everyone getting there early to beat the lines, of course. Funny.
And it’s been raining hard all day today, so I’m guessing a lot of people decided to wait for another, nicer day.
So there was no line at all when I got there. I was in and out in less than ten minutes.
So I’m done, I’ve voted.
Oh, one other thing – I didn’t expose anyone to the risk of getting COVID from me – I was tested yesterday, got my negative result this morning. I know, I know, I was negative as of the time of the test yesterday, but I really didn’t go anywhere where there were people after that. And I was wearing a KN-95 mask anyway.
Yeah, I put off filling out my ballot simply because I didn’t have the psychic energy to devote to all the propositions. Did it this morning, filled out my ballot, and my sister will vote in person tomorrow and drop my ballot off at the drop box at the polling place.
It’s tough. I’ll admit, some of them I put less energy into. Except for rare cases, there’s not much harm in defaulting to “no” if you really can’t figure them out. Almost everything on there is something that the legislature (or even the courts) can and should be doing anyway, so if it’s important enough it’ll happen even without the proposition.
That’s why i voted early. I didn’t vote in a local election in April because i woke up with a sore throat and a cough shortly before election day, and i didn’t want to expose the poll workers to whatever i had. (I’m in the ne, and i had possible covid exposure then.)
It’s one of only two elections I’ve missed since i turned 18. I didn’t want the federal election to be another.
Same here - I voted exactly two weeks before Election Day. I didn’t feel a need to vote sooner (the lines were still long) because I knew if I got sick I’d clear the two week mark before Election Day. While I would’ve preferred to wait another week to avoid the lines completely I wasn’t going to take the risk.
I asked the state to mail me a ballot. So I voted not-too-long after the ballot arrived. Why wait until I lost it?
My state allowed me to place the ballot in a nearby drop-box, so voting was easy and there were no lines. I’m quite happy with how the state has handled voting-during-a-pandemic.
I’m glad we have vote by mail and that I already voted. I woke up coughing this morning.
Before we went to all vote by mail, I didn’t like the idea because I like voting in person. (And I had other concerns that have since been allayed.) I thought it was valuable to come together communally to choose our officials and make collective decisions. But this year especially, I’m very glad we made the change a long time ago, so these are all well-established processes.