Well, what’s going to happen?
Revote or no?
no
Sorry. I should elaborate. You can find a copy of the ballot at http://www.salon.com and see where they were confused. I, personally, can’t see what was confusing about it. After leaving the polls, they started complaining that they didn’t understand how that ballot worked. There is a reason for the volunteers at the polling places. They are more than happy to help you if you don’t understand what to do, but apparently, none of these people thought to ask them for help. There’s no way a revote will happen.
Ag, for a better description, see the other thread on this, but I’ll repeat just a portion here: some polling places were woefully understaffed. I have no idea if Palm Beach was one of them. Up here in MI, my polling place seemed short on people. That was due to turnout. At another precinct in my county, it was so bad they “swore in” a couple of willing voters on the spot, who then stayed and help run the polls. In mine, there was no one to ask questions of. A few people got in the wrong line and an hour later found they had to start over–all because there was no one to ask, and too few workers to help herd people. Once you were in the booth, it was no better. Sure, I could have left, fought my way through some lines to, asked for assistance, and then got back into another line to wait for a new booth to open up. I wouldn’t have had a problem with that, but I’m not everyone.
All I’m saying is, you can’t assume that there were plenty of volunteers lolling about waiting for the question to be asked. There might have been–I hope there was–but I don’t know.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/07/results/index.html
That’s the exact link to the best view of the ballot I’ve seen. There is nothing confusing about it. But, let’s just assume that I had gone to vote on Tuesday and I didn’t understand the ballot. It doesn’t mean I’m stupid, it just means I need a little help understanding what to do. I do remember asking for help my first time voting and recall that the man there was very helpful in explaining the process to me. But, let’s just assume that there was nobody there to help me and I’m standing there with a ballot I don’t understand. Do I just punch out a hole and hope for the best? Hell no. But if I do, and it turns out I was wrong, I have no reason to complain. I did it. I didn’t have to.
Your ATM analogy makes sense, but doesn’t work for this. In my experience with ATM machines, you have the buttons at the side of the glass. A few inches below the glass is the actual screen, and the fact that they’re not at the same depth can be very confusing. I know, because I’ve done it. The ballots they used were not like that. There was an arrow pointing almost all the way to the hole and there were no depth issues. If they punched the wrong hole, then it’s something they’re just going to have to live with.
I will say this - in other areas there were plenty of staffers. I went at 4 pm and there were more poll workers than voters (NYC suburbs) FWIW I was #192 to vote that day.