How do you actually vote in your locality?

Politics & Elections
1

In this thread about reported voting fraud in Texas, a few of voters from Texas and other states discussed how their electronic voting machines worked.

I’m interested in the process of how voting works in your area, including how the voting machines work and, if possible, how the process works for the whole time you’re in your local polling place.

I live and vote in New York City. Up until a few years ago, we used the old, hulking lever voting machines, and I miss them dearly. Now we have paper ballots that are scanned.

I vote in a school gymnasium with multiple election districts (maybe a dozen districts, one of the largest polling places in the City). When you walk into the gym, there is a desk with poll workers who can direct you to the proper election district based on your address, or if you know it, you can go directly to the desk for your election district.

Each election district has a desk in the center of the gym with a couple of poll workers. When you get to the desk, you give your name, and they will look you up in a spiral-bound book that has the names, addresses and scanned signatures of each voter in the district. They have you sign your name next to the scanned signature, and then pull a ballot off a large bound pad of ballots, and give it to you with a cardboard folder to cover it.

The ballot is a large sheet of cardstock weight paper, 8-1/2 inches wide and about 18 inches long. For each race and ballot question, it has the names of the candidates (and yes/no for ballot questions) next to oval bubbles to fill in. Depending on how many races there are, one or both sides of the ballot may be used.

Once you get your ballot, you go to small desks shielded by privacy screens located around the edge of the gym. The desks (usually) have black pens on tethers which you use to fill in the ovals on your ballot.

Once you have marked your ballot, you take it (covered with a folder) to the scanners in the front of the gym. There is a bank of about 10 scanners, and you can put a ballot from any of the election districts into any of the scanners (presumably they are sophisticated enough to track the district you are voting from and which candidates to credit when different districts have different races). The scanners will swallow up your ballot, pause for a moment, and then the screen of the scanner will indicate that the ballot was successfully scanned. (I’ve never not had my ballot go through, so I don’t know what happens if there is a problem).

With that, you’ve exercised your civic duty and can go home.

2

Washington State. Ballots mailed to the residence of every registered voter. You fill them out and mail them back (or drop off at any of several locations nearby)

It’s all quite civilized

3

When I lived in NYC, it was always a school, no matter what borough I lived in. We always had the giant metal boxes with the tiny levers. Now that I’m in Nassau county, it’s in a playground. I was very surprised that my polling place was a playground. Also paper scanned ballots.

4

How could you do a recount with the lever voting machines? Did they generate a paper record?

5

I’m just picking Mrs Piper up and then we’re going to vote in our municipal election (in Saskatchewan). Will report back once it’s done.

6

Boston suburbs. Same as OP, school gym, card stock ballot, SAT-like bubbles you fill in, slide it into a scanner.

Differences:

You don’t have to sign your name coming and going, the poll worker just crosses out your name on the ledgers.

No folder to hide your ballot.

7

I live in NY (but not NYC), and it’s the same as the OP, except that we vote at the local Town Hall.

8

CA (both counties I’ve lived in) have folding cardstock on which you fill in an oval beside the name of a candidate or the “Yes” or “No” responses to Propositions.

For some reason, I remember a Civics(?) class wherein a voting machine was described in detail.

You had to love these - a large level over the Republican and Democratic slates (yes, the names where lined up in columns according to party.

The large lever at the top would switch all the individual levers below.

It made Straight Party voting the default.

Either use the big lever in front of your face or go through the whole board flipping the small levers for each race.
Does anyone still use this “Big City Boss Special” machine?

9

All of the precincts in my suburb vote at City Hall. Before the election, all registered voters are sent a postcard telling them what precinct they’re in, what you need to bring with you to the polling place, and what the early voting options are. At the polling place, there’s a big map of the precincts, so you can find where you’re supposed to be even without the postcard, and each precinct has a folding table set up with one or two volunteers (plus I think a table for general information, like “what precinct am I?”). You go up to the table for your precinct, show the volunteers your ID and sign in a big book, and they hand you your ballot. You take the ballot to one of the privacy booths set up in the room, and fill it out by filling the bubbles, then put it in a cardboard sleeve for privacy and carry it to one of the scanners. You feed it through the scanner into a box underneath it, and then get a sticker on your way out.

10

Sacramento California. Paper ballot and what looks like a magic marker. We are well into the 70’s here.

11

Similar to the OP, but it is at the community ice arena (not in the part with ice) and there is only one machine. I like to verify the vote count gets incremented

In MN they randomly pick some precincts and verify that the machine count is accurate.

Brian

12

We fill out paper ballots and deposit them in a large metal box. For one election, many years ago, we used electronic touchscreen voting machines. There wad some kind of problem with them because the county switched to paper balloons as an interim measure and we’ve been using them ever since. Before the touchscreens we had the mechanical voting machines, but they’re long since retired.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

13

Voted early (called in-person absentee here in Arlington, VA) 2 weeks ago. It’s just like voting on voting day – you show ID, get your ballot (paper), go to a voting stall with a partition, mark the ballot with a pen, then feed it into the machine. That’s it.

14

My polling place is a church hall just down the block from my residence. They have electronic voting machines with big Playskool knobs and buttons for navigating through the ballot. (I expect it will be quite a workout with the massive number of state and local propositions we have this year.) I check in by giving my street address, then last name, which they locate in the book and have me sign in. I’m then given a slip of paper with a pass code to use for the voting machine. After I’ve registered all my votes electronically, it displays them on paper for me to confirm. I press the button, it goes “kachunk,” and the nice lady gives me a sticker as I leave.

15

Vote by mail or in person. It’s been so long since I went to a voting booth that I couldn’t tell you what type of machines are used.

When you vote by mail, you can go to the County Election Commission website and it will tell you if your ballot was received and tabulated (nothing more than that).

I voted yesterday. 22 named candidates for President plus a write in option!

16

Shawnee County, Kansas:

Most of the polling places are in church halls, although the civic theater, several retirement complexes, and various other facilities get pressed into service. (A friend of mine out in a rural part of the county votes at the township hall, which doubles as the office/maintenance building for the township cemetery – the poll workers there joke about being in charge of the cemetery vote.)

The county did away with the big printed registration books several years ago, and now has “PollPads” – iPads with a specialized application listing every voter in the county. You come into the polling place, state your name and hand the poll worker your photo ID, and they look you up in the database (if you use your driver’s license, they can scan the barcode on the back to find your record). Then you sign the screen with their stylus affirming you are you and haven’t voted anywhere else, and they print off a little ticket with your name and ballot number. That ticket gets handed to the ballot clerk at the next table, who hands you the correct ballot based on the number (up to 4 or 5 precincts may vote at the same polling place).

You have a choice of voting on a paper ballot or using the touchscreen. The paper ballot is cardstock, usually printed both sides, with bubbles next to the names to be filled in with a pen. Then you take the ballot to the optical scanner and slide it into the machine. If you choose to vote touchscreen, the machine still just marks your choices onto a paper ballot to slide into the same optical scanner – the touchscreen is just an ADA-compliance device for people who have trouble filling in the bubbles or need large print, etc.

Once you slide your ballot into the scanner, you get your little sticker and away you go. At the end of the night, the optical scanner prints off a tape of the results for each precinct; the tape goes to the election office and the sealed box of paper ballots goes off to storage somewhere in case a hand recount is necessary.

The county used to have touchscreen devices that recorded your votes on the hard drive instead of producing paper, but got rid of them for the 2016 elections; apparently, the lack of a paper trail was the most consistent complaint received by the election commissioner.

The PollPads are pretty slick; if you end up in the wrong polling place, the machine will print a ticket showing where you are supposed to go and directions on how to get there. They also show who has voted early or requested an advance (mail-in) ballot.

17

Seriously. I wish more states (including mine, NY) would go to vote-by-mail. Waiting in lines? What is this, the middle ages?

What do they do if it’s raining?

You don’t. The machines record each vote for each race on a mechanical counter, which is read at the end of the day. You’d better hope the thing doesn’t break.

(I’m actually amazed at how reliable those old knucklebusters were. They were fantastically complicated mechanical marvels. I guess since they’re only used a couple times a year they last a good while.)

18

Chicago suburbs (but I think it’s the same across Illinois):

Paper ballot filled in with pen and then fed into a Scantron style machine. Initial results are electronic with a paper backup in case of a recount or for spot checks.

There’s a couple computerized “ballot filling out” machines at each location for people with disabilities (or just cause you want to use one). But they still produce a paper ballot from my recollection.

19

Here in Park Slope, Brooklyn, we vote just like Billdo does.

20

Colorado here. Vote by mail, or drop the vote at the County Clerk on a road side box. Easy peasy.