I rolled into my polling place at 7am this morning with nothing but a driver’s license and some sense of civic responsibility. I never did get my voter’s registration card, but called and found my district’s polling place and went anyway. They had lumped three pretty populous precincts in one building. Somehow, the precinct captain told several people the wrong line; in the 40 minutes that I was waiting in what happily turned out to be my line, 5 people came steaming out of the voting room, having been told that they were in the wrong line. Chicago’s annoying about that - cross from the south to the north side of the street and you’re in a different precinct. By the time I got back outside after voting, the three seperate lines were all out of the door and starting to go down the block. Huge turnout.
I voted Kerry/Edwards, and voted Dem on most of the other stuff. I wish I had known more about the other candidates, but it’s really hard to figure out who’s even going to be on the ballot, let alone some information on them. There are dozens of judges at various levels, and other positions you’ve never even heard of - all in all, a pretty lengthy ballot. I’m thinking somebody needs to set up a “meet all your candidates” website for next time - each candidate can submit a 200 word description of what they’re about, along with a link to their own website if they have one. Kind of rudimentory, but I can’t imagine that most Chicagoans know much about the lower-level positions that they have to vote for, so anything helps.
I voted this morning at about 8:30. I waited in line for maybe 5 minutes. Since we didn’t have any state initiatives or a lot of local races, it didn’t take long to vote.
FTR: Kerry/Edwards for President and Vice-President, Hoeffel for Senate.
I can’t think of a single place on the east coast except maybe in NYC with those demographics. I currently live in West Oakland, California. Here’s the info on my zip code, which I know isn’t the same as a voting district but close enough. I was close:
26.7% asian
50.8% black
11.3% white
11.2% “other” or “mixed”
I got to my polling place at 1 PM, Barney Fife was guarding the door, and probably waited in line for about 15 minutes before I got to vote. The place had been packed prior to this for early voting, but today I didn’t see that many people.
Voted Libertarian for President (in the vain hope that it’ll slap some sense into the other parties), and then straight Democrat for the rest (they’re slightly less fundie than the Republicans). No Constitutional Amendments here, or very many local candidates either.
I voted about 9:30 this morning. I had a fill in the circle ballot, but we used markers instead of #2 pencils. I even wore mah black hoodie
I voted Kerry/Edwards, no on the Prop. 1 gambling initiative (When I saw both republicans and democrats were against it and found out it wouldn’t touch Indian Casinos, it was a no brainer), and no on the Constitutional Amendment specifying marriage and the like as Man/Woman.
Most of the rest of the ballot had only one candidate, so it didn’t really matter.
Kiss? I can do better than that. Blowfish dot com is offering 10% off to anyone who voted. (I’d link to it but there’s a naked woman on the first page.)
Here in the middle of nowhere it took no time at all to vote. There wasn’t even a line. I guess there might be when the after work people get there. Me, I’m done :).
I just got back from voting for the first time in my 31-year-long life. The polling place is about 8 minutes up the street from my work and I took a late lunch. Line’s weren’t that long when I got there and I only waited about an hour and a half. My mom called me when I was about 2 minutes away from the booth. I told her where I was and promtly got a loud “VOTE FOR KERRY!!!” in my ear. I promptly voted Libertarian when I could and Republican (mostly incumbents) for the rest. What she don’t know won’t hurt her.
Just got back from voting. I waited for over a half hour in line because there was a bunch of college students waiting in line (I live in a college town) and they were all voting provisional. I saw my aunt on the way in and she told me I wouldn’t have to wait in line, I could go to the front because I’m already registered, but when I walked to the front a policeman started hassling me and told me to wait my turn in line. Then an old lady asked how many of us weren’t voting provisional and let us all come to the front. Guess she told him.
This place used punch cards. The only other time I voted in person (I usually vote absentee) it was in another town and they used the lever machines. I’m really worried that my vote didn’t count (remember hanging chads?) or that the list of names didn’t line up correctly with the ballot, though it looked less confusing than the Florida ballot of 2000. I made sure to check that I got the stylus all the way through.
Oh yeah, and I voted Green for all offices that were running a Green (except President, that was for Kerry), and Democrats for the rest. A nice mixture of ideology and pragmatism, I guess.
I really hope the provisional ballots wind up counting. There were so many college kids there using them and you know that like ninety percent of them were anti-Bush. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t count though.
How funny that we both had the same exact experience, only two blocks apart! Hiya, yourself! Check out the thread about the Denver “I voted” party in MPSIMS.
I voted at four this afternoon. My first real election cycle. I voted last year for the ever exciting town council and the like. Last year, at 7:45 (fifteen minutes before the polls closed) I was voter 603. Today, with four hours left, I was 1229. I can’t imagine there are more than 2000 voters in total, as there are 17 other polling places in my town of 70000. It took all of five minutes, there was no line and punch, coffee and pastry, compliments of the boys and girls club waitng for me when I was done.
I miss the old voting machines from my days of going with my parents. I felt like I was voting for student council.
I also took my roommate to the train so she could spend more than two hour to go home and vote and get back to school. We made our third roommate go home to vote as well. I’ve never seen turnout like this.
