How do you actually vote in your locality?

[aurora_maire]

@Skammer

Tennessee (Wilson County) - other counties might be different.

On election day, you go to your local voting location based on what district you’re in; it’s usually a school or a church. Stand in line. Present your ID. They look you up, cross you off their list, and hand you a form to sign. You sign it, they put their ID and signature on it, and you get in another line.

You hand another guy your signed paper. He takes it, walks you to an available voting machine, and hands you a paper ballot (about 4" x 11") which you feed into the machine. He explains how the machine works, without touching anything: in each race, you use the touch-screen to select your choice. If the race is on multiple pages, you have to view each page before you can confirm your vote. After you’ve voted in each race, you press the Submit button on the screen which spits out your ballot with your selections printed on it.

Then you take your ballot and go to another line to feed it into the ballot box (like inserting a dollar bill into a vending machine). When the screen confirms that your ballot has been received, you are free to go.

I voted early last week and it was exactly the same except there are fewer polling places; I went to a local community center instead of the nearby school.

Yep, other counties are different. I’m in Memphis. I always do early voting so I’ve never been to my assigned voting place, which is a community center about 2 miles from my house. The early voting place is a church about 3 blocks away. Go figure.

You show your ID and registration card (if you have one, the guy next to me today didn’t) to the poll worker and they look you up in the computer. They print off a form and ask you to verify that all information is correct (name, address, birth date). You sign it and they sign it. You take this form to another table and give it to a poll worker and then you print and sign your name in a ledger. They give you a key card and you take this to a stand with a touchscreen. You insert the card and the instructions come up. Press next and start getting the voting screens. We only had the presidential race, 3 local races and 2 initiatives so it was pretty quick. When you click “submit ballot” the card pops out and you take it to a worker standing in the middle of the room. I was in and out in 15 minutes.

[dalej42]

Chicago, Illinois. First we exhume the bodies from the grave, then we transport them to the voting location…

Ok, seriously. I’ve voted by mail in the 2014 midterms, mayoral election and run off, and the primary and general elections for 2016. I request my ballot online and then mail it back. They don’t have a tracker to verify receipt.

[foolsguinea]

I’m in Missouri. We used to have the little cards with perforations that you could punch out. After the scandal of “hanging chads” in the 2000 Florida recount, we went to a system with big cards (8½" x 11", I think) that you draw on in ink and are read by an optical scanner. Each option has next to it a sort of arrow with the middle missing, and you fill in the arrow next to your choice with a line from an inkpen.

I am horrified that many localities are totally electronic and impervious to recounts.

The polling place for my precinct is in a church. There used to be polling in a school building for one precinct in my neighborhood, but I believe someone decided that was undesirable, so they moved things around, and now there are two precincts that vote in the same room, always somewhere in the church building.

[Chronos]

A lot of optically-scanned ballots seem to use the complete-the-arrow format. I wonder why? You never seem to see that used for multiple choice tests. What virtue does one have over the other, for the different applications?

[pulykamell]

@Jophiel

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.

I early voted yesterday, and it was (like last time I voted) all touchscreen with a paper record printed to verify. I want to say this was at least the third or fourth election that was touchscreen for me. I actually can’t remember when I last had to use a pencil to fill in the ballot. You get a card that you insert into the computer, make your votes, and then when you’re all done, a paper “receipt” is printed (it stays with the machine, but you review it as it’s printed) and, if all is good, at the end you click “confirm” or whatever on the touchscreen, remove the voting card, and give it back to the election official and receive your “I voted!” wristband and a flyer that says you’ve voted and you can’t vote again on election day.

I also did not need to present a voter registration card or ID. I pulled out my registration card (I’ve actually never used a voter registration card before, but I happened to have this year’s on me because I had just moved, in case there were problems), but they just told me to put it away, they didn’t need it that day. They did have me fill out my name, address, and sign something, which they then typed into a computer to check/pull up my information, I guess.

Oh, and this was at the local public library.

[Peremensoe]

@eschereal

The franchise-restrictivists object to that. They suggest that your abusive spouse or domineering parent will force you to vote a certain way. Or somesuch nonsense. And, of course, it disenfranchises the homeless.

But it’s a great deal for people at addresses where registered voters have died or moved away. And maybe people who steal mail.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Chronos

A lot of optically-scanned ballots seem to use the complete-the-arrow format. I wonder why? You never seem to see that used for multiple choice tests. What virtue does one have over the other, for the different applications?

They could be scanned more easily by cheap scanners back when they were introduced. They also seemed to encourage people to ‘stay within the lines’ when marking them.

The disadvantage was that they took up more space on the ballot, sometimes making it go over to multiple pages. Also, they don’t work well for ranked-choice voting, when you vote for several candidates for the office, ranking them in the order you prefer.