This is for your tales of voting, lines, balloting irregularities, voter disenfranchisement shenanigans, and anything else similar. Good or bad. Whether your personal experience or something from the media.
My story? Got my vote-by mail ballot around Sept 20, mailed it Oct 1, and first checked on its progress today. The county election board says they have it back and it’s been counted. Their website doesn’t give a timeline of each step.
Our early voting kicks off Oct 19. So far so normal.
My local drop-box is at a community college. There is no free parking anywhere close. I generally take a chance and have never been caught when I grab a nearby open space for long enough to walk over and put my ballot in the slot. There was one time when I tried to drop it off during a flea market and had to walk quite a way.
Just finished my refresher training as an Election Judge this past week. Been doing this for more than a couple of decades now, but each year we have a couple hours training on what is new or changed, and refreshing on the basic stuff.
Interesting that much of the ‘new’ stuff was about dealing with inappropriate or un-allowed people at or near the polling place. Nothing has changed in the laws about that, it’s been illegal for years. But now, here in Minnesota, the latest concern is about voter interference or intimidation from Government agents!
Previous years that training was mainly about improper persuasion or candidate campaigning too near the polls. Mentioned howling mobs as something from the Civil Rights era, 60 years ago, in other states. And we once had a nutcase, with car-mounted bullhorns, ranting about ‘government agents destroying his holy marriage, and giving his kids to his disobedient wife’, but he just made noise for a while and then left.
Never thought that I, as a poll worker, would have to be concerned with defending our state polls from our Federal government, as ICE workers or National Guard troops.
Received our mail-in ballots on Thursday. Filled them out and hand-delivered them to the Elko [NV] County Clerk’s Office on Friday morning. This is our normal routine. No issues.
Barbara and I received our mail ballots today – ten calendar days after the “Ballot Mailed Date” shown on the Pennsylvania Election Ballot Status web page. I do not recall it ever arriving this late before but see no reason to jump to conclusions other than that delivery schedules can vary a bit. We will mail our ballots back promptly in case there are delays going the other way.
I received my mail-in ballot on the 3rd of October. I haven’t filled it in yet, there is a lot of research I have to do about ballot measures, both state and local. I have given myself a deadline of the 19th to have that done. There is a drop-box in a nearby neighborhood with street parking available during the day, so that is where I will drop it. I’m not anticipating any difficulties here in San Francisco.
I considered being a poll watcher, but again, I don’t anticipate any difficulties, and since I am still recovering from hip replacement surgery, I would not be able to stand around for very long.
I posted this in the “Pissed you off today” thread.
Thanks to signing up for it I received an SMS and email this week that the ballot was being prepared (Monday), and mailed (Wednesday). It was in my mailbox on Thursday. I marked it last night (Friday) and put it in the drop-off box in front of the registrar’s satellite office this morning (Saturday).
I expect to get notice that it has been received, that the signature checked okay, and, finally, counted next week.
I learned about this while watching half a dozen things that I either mailed or was waiting to receive in the mail … languish … at different USPS locations in different parts of the country … including a Registered:Return-Receipt Requested letter I sent to Canada … which has been stuck in Chicago – motionless – for nearly three weeks.
Ballotss were mailed out on Oct. 5 and I received mine on the 8th. I have it mostly filled out and just need to look into some offices / candidates that I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve almost always voted by mail and had no problem, but this year I’m weighing whether to mail it back our drop it in the box at City Hall across the street. One would think it should be secure there. I’m going to be a poll observer this time around and training is next Wed. I’m not sure what to expect, in comparison to the '24 election. There wasn’t much emphasis on bad actors then and indeed, the only thing I encountered was one woman who wore here bedazzled and befucked MAGA baseball cap. This time around, who knows?
Thanks for your continuing work. I had to give it up because of my hearing loss but, once I had done the job, I was sorry that I had waited so long to do so. Everyone should work an election once, it’s a great experience.
Like Roderick, I received a California ballot about a week ago. I hope my neighbors open the envelope early as there are two pages of choices, double-sided. I wonder if some states, territories and provinces have an even longer ballot.
I saw that some people in Massachusetts are getting three-page double-sided ballots this time. I should quit my griping about taking twenty minutes to vote when it surely takes some people longer than that.
My Texas ballot is five pages, four columns on each. I like to vote in person on election day, so I always print it out from the county website and research (as much as possible) every race that I’m not already informed about - mostly judges. I take that with me to the polling place as a cheat-sheet and enter my vote on the touch-screen. It doesn’t take long doing it that way, but there are lots of people who obviously have never looked at the ballot beforehand and laboriously read through everything when at the polls.
Washington State is 100% vote-by-mail (and has been for a number of years) but our ballots haven’t arrived yet, just the voting pamphlet so far. We do have ballot drop boxes as an alternative to the mail, and we’ll be utilizing them this year.
That’s my strategy as well. I’m planning to vote in person on the 22nd. Due to our city council and mayoral elections being especially contentious this year, I expect long lines. Despite turnout usually being lower in midterms, I wouldn’t be surprised if the turnout for Corpus Christi ends up being higher this year than it was even in 2020.
Well, here’s a little bit of “Ugly”, whether by accident or intentional.
For the first time ever in 22 years, I did not receive my voter’s pamphlet in the mail. I checked and learned it should have gone out from our elections board on the 7th. We’re now to the 13th, and no pamphlet. I had a hold on my mail to the 8th, but there was no pamphlet in with that bunch of mail when I picked it up.
I seldom go deep into downtown Ewe-Jean where the elections office is, but today I happened to have an errand to run near there. I stopped by the elections office and picked up a pamphlet.
I’ve had problems with our fairly new rural mail carrier before. I suspect we come down on opposite sides of the political divide, and it’s pretty obvious from my regular junk mail which side I’m on. Think solicitations from the ACLU, Union for Concerned Scientists, Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Democratic Party, e.g. I don’t like to think the mail carrier is deliberately “losing” mail, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
I’ll be bird dogging my ballot, too, which should go out from the elections office on the 14th.