Thanks for starting this thread - I had already voted, but hadn’t checked to see if my mail-in ballot arrived.
It’s marked as received, so my part is done.
Why are you reading any of that stuff at the polling place?
All that reading and deciding should be done at home beforehand. Voting is then a matter of transcribing your prior decisions onto their form/screen.
Our touchscreen system was new to me too.
If I didn’t vote a particular race and tapped [Next] the screen changed to say “Ballot incomplete, you didn’t vote enough choices in this race”. And if I tapped the [Next] button shown in the same place as on the voting screens I moved on to the next race with that one un-voted. I skipped several races that way. But I admit I was initially confused by the screen’s wording which seemed to imply a vote was mandatory in every race.
I suspect you were confused (or deliberately bamboozled) by a similar screen design that avoided using the familiar “Are you sure? [go back] [proceed]” idiom and instead had a woolier explanation for the same idea.
When I was done the machine printed my votes onto a long card and indeed every race I skipped was listed as “no vote.”
I’ll be voting on Election Day, as I’ve done previously. My brother has voted already and thinks my voting strategy is wrong. “What if there’s a freak snowstorm on Election Day?”
My “strategy” is simple: election day = crowded and last chance with no back-up plan. Early is uncrowded and lots of back-up chances. What’s not to prefer about Door #2?
The reason I don’t go with Door #2 is that a candidate might well give me a reason to vote against them (a) before Election Day, but (b) after I’ve, y’know, voted.
It’s a long shot, but I figure it’s worth it.
My Door #1 is a short drive to the Sportsman’s Club where I will be one of two or three voters as they open up for business. It’s a tradition.
As to primaries I support your notion. More than once I’ve mailed in a ballot a month early only to have my preferred candidate drop out of the race before the final voting day for that primary.
IMO there’s much less chance of that a week or two out in an actual election rather than in a primary.
My poll worker training was 90% on handling contingencies: what if the voter had also requested a mail-in ballot? (which is generally the case – everybody gets a mail-in ballot by default). What if they want to do same day registration? What if their signature doesn’t match what we have on file?
Setting up the polling location, I’m really impressed with all the security protocols. Every count is audited and balanced. The drop box has two locks, like a nuclear launch silo, and is loaded with fire retardant. Every port on the voting machine* is covered with a door, the door is zip-locked, the zip-lock has a serial number and the number is logged every time the seal is opened.
*The first time I booted up a voting machine it displayed “Dominion Voting Systems” and I thought … oh, crap. 
We had one observer yesterday – very polite and professional, but never said a word about herself or who she represented. But she also brought doughnuts.
I assumed DesertDog lived in a vote by mail state. If so, everything is done at home.
And I know we say it every two years, but jeepers vote-by-mail is the way to go! Every voter gets a ballot and a voters’ guide in the mail. No lines, no controversy, no rush, no inconvenience whatsoever. I can’t figure out why we don’t get close to 90% voting though.
It was the wording that confused me. Stupid sneaky tactics.
Your polling place is the Sportsman’s Club? Isn’t that a place where folks like to wear camo and carry guns around? Perhaps that could be a little intimidating to some folks.
It’s a big empty building. No guns present when it’s being used as a polling place. Coincidentally, I am in Armstrong County in Pennsylvania, one of the most heavily armed counties in the US.
Top 30:
Fairbanks borough, AK – 59.1%
Tooele County, UT – 59.1%
Nez Perce County, ID – 59.0%
Armstrong County, PA – 57.6%
My state (Washington) all voting is done by mail. My wife and I got our ballots last Friday, I dropped them off at a ballot collection station Saturday morning. Just checked with the county election site, my ballot has been counted. Now just the waiting for all the end of all the political commercials on TV. A couple of the republican candidates commercials have really gotten nasty the past few days accusing their opponents of unspeakable acts. The scary part is there are folks out there that believe this crap.
I just got the following text message. Anyone know what it means? Is it legit? Names redacted.
Hey (redacted) - it’s (redacted) with Progressive Turnout Project. Wanna make $100 per walk list to rally Democrats? Lists only take 2 hrs, no cap on how many you can do! Interested?
Stop to end
I’m guessing they want you to knock on doors on Election Day.
My guess is that they are looking to hire door to door canvassers, and that a “walk list” is a list of addresses that are close together, walkable. Maybe its all the addresses in a neighborhood, maybe it’s a list of registered Democrats. It’s a get out the vote effort. They are paying $100 for someone to cover all the addresses in the list, there is no limit to how many lists of doors you can canvass.
This is all perfectly legal. Why paying someone to vote is illegal and wrong, paying someone to convince others to vote is perfectly legal and an accepted campaign tactic.
ETA: Read the list again, and they are probably giving out lists of registered Democrats. I think it can be an effective technique because it makes the voter feel that the candidate cares about their issues. When I lived in NYC, which can have a small town vibe at times, it was not uncommon for the candidate for local races to personally knock on doors and campaign on street corners. When I was able to talk directly to the candidate for a few minutes, they usually got my vote.
Got a postcard today from the NY state DNC remind me to mail my absentee ballot because it hadn’t hadn’t been returned yet per their records. I checked and it was received.
Curious how they would even have the right or ability to check my absentee ballot status. Besides that, it’s not even election day yet.
Maryland poll workers don’t have any responsibilities for checking signatures at all. I don’t even know what state law requires for mail in ballots.
Maybe they send those postcards to everyone they think is a Democrat. No harm if you’ve already voted, but a good reminder if you need one.