Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic US election

So election day for the Americans today - Good luck, you guys!

If you can, get a paper receipt!

Bit of a political junkie, so I'll be glued to the TV tonight.

c.

A paper receipt?? All I ever get is a sticker.

Very dissappointed this morning (my daughter even cried! ) Went to my new polling place in the new state I've recently moved to. But lo and behold they're not open at 6:00 in the morning!!!! So now, there's no point in even wearing my sticker (I'll just go home... the dog could care less for a reminder to vote!)

My daughter was inconsolable when they kicked us out. She and her teddy bear wanted to vote for "blue" (no clue what she's thinking there! )

Julie

I'll just be glad when it's over. I am so sick of political commercials. Especially since around here 95% are nothing but mud-slinging.

I will vote, though.

Here, Here, Tzigone! Now if we could only somehow require the candidates to pull their signs down after so many days!!

It took me four attempts since Friday to drop off my ballot but I finally succeeded. My state has all mail-in balloting with no polling places, but many drop off their ballots at local public libraries. Normally the library is open on election day early so people can vote, but in every day I've tried to vote, the library was closed.

Today was no exception since the library finally opened at 11:00. When I first tried at around 9:00, there were a bunch of frustrated people with ballot envelopes in hand. It makes me think this is all a conspiracy to suppress voting.

What's the purpose of the sticker?

By paper receipt, I meant a paper receipt after you cast your vote.
Apparently they're availble in most states and in some states are vital if there needs to be a recount.

But, as I say, I'm an outsider and so don't quite know how your system works. Must say I'm a bit surprised by what Roger had to say about the Library.

c.

I heard on this evening's news that already there's a rash of court cases going on, a lot of places seeking extensions because of voting machine glitches, one place which had the wrong forms, and a host of other problems.

Is that something unusual? Or do these glitches turn up at every election? I'd imagine the latter, given the size of the country and the no. of election sites, but I've no clue how it all works, so...

Just curious. It seems a bit chaotic. But maybe it's always like this.

LabRat

Until the runoffs this past June I've always voted with the punchcard. They've just instituted the "computer voting" and both times (last June and again today) I found it the easiest thing in the world. You get a coded card that expires in a short amount of time and/or as soon as it's been used. Then you insert it in the machine and use the touch screen to make your selections.

There is a "paper copy" of my vote. As you accept your votes it prints out your choices on a roll of paper that's beneath some glass. You can read it and double-check it against the screen. When you're done voting it rolls up into the machine so the next person can't see what you selected. You turn in your passcard and you're done.

There are always glitches, but fortunately I've never run into them. The next district over from me is in chaos right now, though. <g>

Sue (who has now earned the right to grouse about the dumba** that keeps getting elected to the Senate for the next four years - again. I comfort myself that *I* didn't vote for him.)

There will always be glitches in every election just because people are involved. What bothers me is that so many instantly call fraud whenever any type of glitch happens. Machines break, people don't deliver enough ballots, poll workers don't have the proper training to run the machines. Since the American electorate has been so evenly divided for the last ten years, usually 51-49 plus or minus one or two percentages, any glitches are magnified.

What about when you have paper slips to mark your vote on and some candidates have already been marked when you get your ballot? Happened to my father once.

The sticker says "I voted today"... kinda a nice reminder to those around you that they need to vote too. I used to be one of the first at my polling place (always my geeky goal to be no. 1! ) and I'd wear my sticker to work. I was always amazed my the number of people who forgot that is was voting day and my silly little sticker would remind them.

As for glitches etc: Used to vote with the punch cards; never had a glitch with them. New state has the "fill in the oval" method. No glitches there (except that I mistook the ballot "box" for a paper shredder and the polling people laughed at me that I had never seen a ballot box like that!) Neither method gives you any type of paper receipt. They simply match up the number on the top of the ballot with the number they write next to my name.

What shocks me every time I vote is that no one asks for ID. Apparently they now do in my old state--as I jokingly told my old roommate to vote for me (I'm sure I'm still registered to vote in Ohio!--I remember voting 6 months after my mom passed away and she was still registered. I was so irate about that and let them know it!)

With Sue: now I can complain for the next 4-6 yrs as the idiots in office now aren't the ones I voted for!

Julie

See, from this outsiders' pov, Roger, I just find it amazing that this is considered normal, unavoidable and nothing to complain about. If any one of these things stopped a voter from voting here in the UK all hell would break loose. <G>

But, I do think the difference in numbers of voting stations and voters probably factors in here. It's easier to organise when you're smaller.

LabRat

Also the ballot is a lot simpler in British elections, as I understand it - ours just have a list of the candidates in alphabetical order, regardless of party, and you don't normally vote on anything else, whereas American ballots have lots of questions on things that the individual state wants to do - have I got that right?

You got it right, Marcus. My ballot yesterday had races for one senator, one congressman, a city council member, six judges (no write-ins, you just vote whether or not to retain judges), county sheriff, county assessor, county clerk, county attorney and a new school district board member. Plus two proposed tax increases (one to develop infrastructure and the other for education). Sometimes there are even more offices and propositions or amendments to the state's constitution to vote for as well.

Luckily, about a month before the election a non-partisan booklet comes in the mail with a short explanation of all the new proposals and statement from each candidate about their platform and views.

I don't know if it's considered normal and nothing to complain about. I certainly think there have been some really sketchy incidents in the last few years (I'm from Ohio, where unfortunately a lot of sketchy things happened in 2004). My brother stood in line for nine hours to vote last time because his polling place had only been allocated two machines, despite having 1000 people registered to vote there! If not fraud, this is at least gross incompetence and worth making a fuss over. I haven't talked to him today, but I'm hoping things were less chaotic and miserable for him this time!

I vote absentee, which saves me standing in line but always leaves me wondering if my ballot made it and whether it got counted or accidentally dropped behind a desk

Kaylle

Ballots and balloting can be very complicated here in the states. Each state sets guidelines that follow the state's election laws but it's usually up to the specific county to design the ballot and place the correct issues in it. With tens of thousands of counties, you have tens of thousands of different ballots.

Each county may also have different voting systems and vote counting methods and rules. One county may have punch cards while the neighboring county may be using a touch screen. And often these systems change between elections. After 2000 and the butterfly ballot, many states passed new laws to do away with chads, going to new systems. Some went to computerized methods. Others went to pen-based ballots where you just fill in ovals with a pen or a number two pencil. It's almost like taking the SAT's again!

With many rule changes, new equipment, new ballots, etc. each election has the potential for problems. It's a bit chaotic but there is no uniform system country-wide or even state-wide.

Only in recent times has the electorate become so evenly divided, so close races have become the rule rather than the exception. For instance 18 House seats were determined by fewer than 5,000 votes this time around and two Senate seats by fewer than 8,000. A small change could have drastically changed the ending results and completely changed the balance of power, so while the results look like huge change, the number of votes weren't that different. And with close races come problems. Our systems have always been chaotic, but usually races weren't close, so discrepancies weren't important. So what if two hundred votes had problems when someone wins by tens of thousands? Now with so many nearly tied elections, the problems are amplified. And no more so than in the 2000 election.

No kidding. After the 6th proposal on the ballot this year I was shaking my head. In addition, I had to vote for: Governor, Attorney General, Senator, Representative, State Representative, county commissioner, drain commissioner, 3 judicial races, 2 separate seats in 2 separate universities' governing boards.

That makes over 20 different things to vote on/for. If a person didn't prepare beforehand, it'd be impossible. Or you can bypass proposals and judicial seats, vote a straight-party ticket and be done with it. I don't like to do that, though. I'm still young enough to get a kick out of voting.

And I do have the satisfaction of knowing, as Roger pointed out, that my vote really does matter these days. It makes it worth the research.

For my district's ballot in California, we voted on Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Controller, Treasurer, Attorney General, Insurance Commissioner, Member of the State Board of Equalization, US Senator, US House of Representatives, Member of the State Assembly, 14 yes/no votes on Judges, 13 ballot propositions, school board members, water district director, and a city charter amendment. The Official Voter Information Guide was 191 pages long!

This is in no way a complaint from me, though. I'm a Social Studies teacher, so this is one of the few days each year that anyone pays attention to my subject matter! I decorate my classroom with bunting, teach my students about the issues that are relevant to them, and hold a mock election. I also wear my Uncle Sam hat and greet everyone with "Happy Election Day!"

And those little "I voted" stickers are important! Several years ago, the city of San Diego let an internal memo slip out that they weren't going to give out the stickers anymore because they wanted to save money. The public outcry was vocal and angry! Within 2 days, a local rich person donated something like $150,000 to buy the stickers. We got our stickers that election day, and the city has never tried to get rid of them since.

I have "I voted" stickers going all the way back to 1988 when I first voted. (I stick them in whatever journal I'm keeping at the time.) Only twice in all that time have they not had the stickers and yesterday was the second time. It made me so sad. It's Pavlovian - you vote, you get a sticker.

Dang it, I earned that sticker!

You see, to me, as a former academic researcher and now someone qualified to administer standardised tests, this alone renders the whole process unreliable and invalid. By having different voting methods all over the place, there's no way, for example, that the same margin of error could apply across the whole country. Margins of error do exist, and mostly it's not a problem because we all know they're there and they're equal everywhere you go. Not with this kind of system.

So it absolutely baffles me, purely from the perspective of ensuring reliability and validity of elections, that such variance in voting methods is allowed for national elections (or even for state-level elections where different districts use different methods).

As for write-ins. is that purely a US thing? In my experience of elections, in Ireland, the UK and now in Canada, a candidate is either on the ballot or s/he is not. What's with this idea of adding someone's name? Is it official? Do people actually get elected that way? In Ireland and the UK, any mark on the ballot paper other than the prescribed marking (an X or 1,2,3 etc where it's a preferential-voting system) means a spoilt ballot and it doesn't get counted.

Interesting...


Wendy