I already voted two weeks ago. Yay for mail-in ballots.
Waaa, I voted early and now I wish I hadn’t. I love the process of voting and it would have been nice to vote today. Still, it is fun to read all of your stories.
For anyone curious, here’s video from this morning of Barack and Michelle voting at their local polling place. The camera just stays on them, and you might be thinking, what the hell are they doing? Lots of stuff on the ballots, especially judges. They take the kids with them and it’s fun to see how Barack interacts with them. Of course, there’s no audio other than the talking heads.
Small town voter here. At my polling place, it’s typical to see maybe 250-300 votes cast all day long. I was number 401 to sign the book, and that was at 9:15 AM. If this is typical of other polling places, this election is going to shatter voter turnout records.
The cynic in me notes that my location had only two little booth/stand thingies for voters to use (we use a fill-in-the-oval type ballot). Previous elections, even purely local ones, have had 4-6 such booth/stand thingies. With all predictions I’ve seen predicting a heavy turnout, I gotta wonder why they would have fewer places for people to actually mark their ballots…
We got to our polling place (a cerebral palsy association building) about 7:10, ten minutes or so after the polls opened. We waited for about half an hour or so, and our polling place suffered from the same last name alphabetization confusion others have mentioned, but everyone was cheerful about it. The guy handing out Republican voting guides was getting no takers, while the Democrat was busy, so I can hope Delaware County will continue to trend Democratic.
I have no idea how busy it was compared to most years, because we just moved here this spring.
I’ve got an actual election procedure gripe.
Here’s the system where I voted. It was at City Hall, so not some high school gym or an out of the way UU church or something. This is the place to vote covering the largest population in the state.
Ok. So first the was the issue of how I just strolled right in and looked around before the polling was even open for business. That seemed strange, but no harm no foul. The foul I’m willing to cry is what happened when I did get in line for the actual vote.
There were two lines: one for last names A to K, another for last names L to Z. The first thing I notice is that the A to K line is pretty much empty/moving, and the L to Z line is at a standstill. Now despite my user name here, my last name actually starts with an S, so I was stuck in the stand-still line. I figured out the problem by the time I made it to the little table.
The thing is, at each table there was one volunteer looking up names in the rolls, one volunteer to hand me my local ballot and one volunteer to hand me my national ballot. Thank Buddha they were volunteers because … really … you need three people to handle that? One of the ballot hander outers looked like a high school kid, so I’ll cut him some slack, exept to say that I think they should have put him on the looking up the names gig. The 147 year old bag of bones who was in charge of that was making a soup sandwich out of the whole thing.
First of all, I give her my last name, which as I said starts with S, and incidentily is a pretty uniqe (ethnic (Polish)) name, so there aren’t a whole ton of us wandering around. The first thing she does is flip to the R section. I was going to point out to her that S doesn’t start with R, but I didn’t want to be a douche. By the time she got to the S section, I had to watch her flip past my name a half a dozen times before she found it – and again, I was the only S-mylastname listed. At that point, she just flopped the book right open so I could see my registration.
Now in Maine, you don’t need to show ID if you are already registered (as I am), you just need to verbally confirm your name and address. But I could see my name and address right in front of me. It wasn’t so much a “I’ll tell you my name and address and you confirm it” as much as it was a “you point at a name and I’ll take that one.”
If I were trying to pull a fast one, it would have been simple. I don’t think she fully grasped the nature of the verification questions. I literally said, “yeah, that’s me right there where your finger is.”
So if you want to be unscrupulous, it seems Portland, Maine is the place to be.
Maybe I should inform ACORN, so we can really get some fraud going on.
I was going to ask if we should pay any attention to exit polls this time. Apparentely not. So I guess the only thing we can look at until closing time is the turnout in key states.
Again for anyone curious as to why it took so long for them to vote, here is the ballot I filled out in Chicago (2 page pdf). The Obama’s ballots would have been very similar, with some different judges, but probably as many, if not more. I used a touchscreen to vote, but they had paper ballots where you have to fill in a line next to the name.
Good grief. I have voted in a good ten elections in New York City. Ususally you have to poke the helpers awake because the polling places are empty. I always vote after work and am in and out in five minutes.
I decided to vote before work today. I waited nearly an hour and a half. In New York City. And it wasn’t even against Giuliani.
The video I saw on that page had no talking heads, and it did have audio. He puts his ballot in the box and everyone (presumably those still in line) broke out in applause, then again when he shows his “I voted” sticker. I liked that he made a point of thanking the volunteer for her work before putting in his ballot.
It cracks me up to see him using the same little fold-out stands I was using this morning. Just not usual for me to see big names in mundane settings like that.
I had one of those, too. I mean, Og bless 'em, really. They’re performing an absolutely essential but horribly tedious all-day task helping to facilitate the single most important civic responsibility an American citizen bears, but jeezamighty why do most of them have to be near-centenarians?
Please don’t do that. Don’t buy into the meme that ACORN is all the nasty things the right wingers say it is. ACORN did nothing wrong, and don’t let them set the standard of discussion. It’s similar to their making such a big deal out of “Al Gore invented the Internet” which he never said and was complete bullshit the way they twisted it to make him look goofy, but it became a meme that’s used to this day. This election is about getting these creatures out of our government, and hopefully out of our lives. Don’t let them steer the ship anymore, and please, please, don’t let their sullying the good name of ACORN become a joke.
Thank you. That is all.
Too late. You’ve protested. It’s now firmly in the joke lexicon; Sub-section “Gore Invented the Internet” – (see McCain Invented the Blackberry).
At first I went, huh? but then I refreshed the page. They edited the video down. The one I watched before I posted was 16 minutes long. The one they have there now is 1:35. Boy, my post is going to look awfully silly now.
My god I hate right wingers and the media that sucks up to them. Poor ACORN, they’re going to have to change their name.
The same reason older people vote the most, I’m sure: older (retired) people are more likely to have the free time.
I got the same kind of “is there a problem?” reaction, and I was only in there for three to five minutes. There were very few races in my area this year - president, four judges (all unopposed, so I didn’t bother voting for them), a representative, an assembly race and I think a council member… and this is New York, where people start grumbling pretty fast. Sorry, people in line, I actually took the time to read the ballot initiative, too. 
Don’t you know you’re just supposed to vote whichever way the last sign about the initiative you saw said to vote?
I’m from Illinois, haven’t voted yet but will this afternoon. I plan to bring my camera with to take pictures.
This morning as I was getting ready for work, I flipped on the news just in time to watch Barack Obama vote. I stopped to watch and had tears streaming down my face. I’m sure watching the results and his speech tonight will bring even more tears of joy and pride.
I also wanted to add a huge thank you to all of the dedicated dopers who have spent the past 18 months discussing and debating this election. This has been my daily stop for all of the discussion, polling information, and news links to keep me well informed about the election. I’ve learned a lot and have come to admire many of you for your time and dedication to the political process. Cheers.
Looks good in my home state.
Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies and police from the Town of Blacksburg are on hand at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Blacksburg, where turnout has been extremely heavy, especially among college students.
How great it would be if Virginia plays a part in electing Obama.
here here!!! Gobama!!!
Same here. The only other item of interest for us was Rangel, whom I expect will win handily despite his low-grade ethics issues.