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

The write-in candidate is official. If you clicked on "write-in" on the electronic ballot screen you were given a new screen with a keyboard setup to type in the name.

Though the United States is one country, historically we've been very state-oriented. States rights, aka federalism, is a very important concept even in federal elections. We even fought a civil war over it. Even for federal elections, states are in charge of setting all the rules for them. And within states, counties are often given leeway to conduct things as they see fit, given certain guidelines. The feds take an interest only when state rules may violate the Constitution, e.g. term limits for federal offices or federal Voting Rights Act. Otherwise, the feds have very little say in how a state conducts elections.

Even our presidential election is not a popular vote. Rather it is the states that vote on the president with each state assigned electoral votes based on population. So a campaign for president is really 50 individual campaigns in each state. Voters in each state vote for a slate of electors. Those electors are the ones that cast their votes for president, so it's possible for electors to vote for somebody else entirely.

Before the Civil War, people considered themselves Virginians or New Yorkers or Ohioans, etc. first and foremost. Afterwards, as said by historian Shelby Foote, "the United States are" became "the United States is". But even after a century and a half, states rights is still tightly ingrained in our systems of government.

As for write-in candidates, that's usually permitted, but again it's up to the states to set the rules.

For instance, in the Tom DeLay seat in Texas, DeLay was unable to remove his name and substitute another name. So his replacement had to be a write-in candidate. With a name like Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, it was pretty tough for her to win. They should have nominated "John Smith" to have the best chance to win.

In the Florida Mark Foley seat, state law said that Foley's name could not be removed as well, so to vote for Joe Negron, you had to "punch Foley to vote for Negron."

Very few people get elected as write-in candidates but there have been successful campaigns. It's just hard to get elected that way.

I've been a paid-volunteer election unit judge in Maryland since the general presidential election of 2004, so I'm pretty familiar with the new Diebold voting units. From what I can tell, the process here in Maryland is pretty similar to Sue's experience--with a couple of differences.

But before I get into that, a few words about the stickers:

When I took a Journalism class during the Fall of '04, the teacher would give us bonus points for being registered/registering to vote, AND for voting, and the sticker was the proof that we'd take to class so that we could get credit.

Also, some businesses require their employees to bring in the sticker to show why they might have been late to work on election day--some might even give bonuses to employees who vote, but I'm not even close to positive about that, so don't quote me.

We had the "connect the two lines with another line" method before the machines.

This is the process as it's now being implemented in Frederick County, Maryland:

-Before the polls open, a tape is printed for each voting unit, which shows that the machine started at 0 votes for every candidate.

-Voters go to the sign-in tables, where "book judges" are sitting. They tell their last name, first name, and address, then the book judge uses the electronic poll book to code their Voter Access Card. A slip of paper prints out with their name and contact information, plus a place for the voter to sign if the information is correct.

(If the voter is not in our precint, then they are given the option to do a paper provisional ballot, or to be given directions to their correct precinct.)

-The voter then is shown, by a voting unit judge (i.e. me), to a voting machine. The unit judge takes the slip of paper, initials it on the appropriate line, and then writes the machine's NUMBER on the slip of paper. The paper goes into an envelope taped to the outside of the machine's privacy wall.

-After some simple instructions ("Slide the card in all the way--make sure it clicks--and you'll get an instruction screen. The summary page at the end of the ballot is kind of long, so you'll have to scroll down using the arrows on the LEFT-HAND side to see all of it."), the unit judge walks away, and the voter votes.

-When they're done voting, they touch the "Cast Ballot" button, and the card pops out of the machine. They bring the card to the unit judge at another table, who will then give them the all-important "I voted!" sticker.

-EVERY HOUR, ON THE HOUR, one of the unit judges goes to EVERY voting unit, checks the number of ballots quoted on the machine (there's a status bar at the bottom of the screen), and then counts the number of slips of paper in the envelope on the side to make sure the counts match.

-The counts for all the machines are added up, then the total is taken to the Chief Judges, who have by that time checked the poll book machines for the correct number. If the two totals are less than about 5 ballots off (not including provisional ballots, which are done on paper), then the count is good.

-Then finally, at the end of the day, another report is printed from each voting unit, showing the total number of votes for each candidate, including write-ins. One copy of both the zero and the total reports is hung outside the polling place, and other copy of both reports is sent to the county/state election board (I'm not sure which).

We don't have paper copies of individual votes--what would you do with them? You know who you voted for, and as long as the votes on the summary screen are the people you voted for, then why would you need to keep a record of it for yourself?

Usually, in my voting precint, Diebold sends one of their representatives to us at least four times during the course of the day--probably more. And if there are problems with the voting units or the electronic poll books, then the Chief Judges have a cell phone (the ONLY ones allowed in the precinct, which are provided by the election board, and are only allowed to be used for emergencies, glitches, or for the election board to get in touch with the individual precincts) to call the Diebold rep.

Being an election judge is not hard work, but you do have to be at your polling place by 5:45 to help setup for the 7am opening of the polls. And polls close at 8pm, but we usually don't get out of there until about 9 or 9:30-ish, because we have to take down the voting units and seal everything up, recording all of the seal numbers and the totals very meticulously. It gets me away from the monotony of the office, and I get some extra money for Christmas, so it's all to the good for me.

Incidentally, Maryland (or at least Frederick County) is looking for volunteers to be election judges in the 2008 presidential election, just in case any of you wanted to know that.

Try having a relative run for something.... Haha
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I thought after the hanging chad fiasco that all the states were required to use computerized voting.
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Hanging chads aside, it's because so many states have been forced to use computerized voting. They haven't worked out the bugs. Now, what's really funny about that is I live in Kentucky and some folks would laugh and say we are 'backwards', but we've had computerized voting for ages and so most of the glitches have been worked out.
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No cards to insert in Kentucky. The system is totally touch screen.
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Yes, Marcus, every state is different.
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Hmmm.... I've never had a sticker saying that I voted.
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I'm pretty sure Kentucky is fairly standarized. That just blows my mind that different counties would have different voting methods.
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And yes, Wendy, you can write in a name that's not on the ballot. I don't know how many people have been elected that way.
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Very good explanation about state vs federal government, RL.

Nope. In my state, we have all mail-in balloting, so we're sent scantrons, essentially. We fill in little ovals in pen or pencil and either mail them in or drop them off in drop boxes. IIRC, these ballot types are called optical ballots, tabulated by optical readers. There are no polling stations on election day. So we definitely don't have electronic voting. I remember before we went to optical readers, we were using punch cards, chads and all. I like these new ballots because those punched out chads always ended up all over the floor, making a mess.

Thanks!

I find it funny that Secretary of State means different things, depending on the context. On the federal level, the Secretary of State is in charge of foreign policy, in charge of all the red stripe crowd at Foggy Bottom, and spends a lot of time traveling out of the country.

In a state, the Secretary of State is in charge of elections within the state, setting rules and controlling the elections bureaucracy. The SecState also travels a lot with the responsibility for bringing business into the state. So they go to other states as well as other countries in an attempt to boost trade or bring in potential employers.

So that a recount is actually a count of the votes instead of seeing if the same number is still on the diplay. It's nice to be able to check that the machine isn't programmed to record,as opposed to what it showed you on the display every 10th vote for party A as a vote for party B.

You don't keep it yourself, thats also a bad idea, makes buying votes easier since they can actually check who you voted for. They go in a ballot box in case of an objection and recount. Usual policy is you recount some percentage of polling places and if the recount and the machines agree accept the machine totals.

Ah, so states in the US are like our constituencies - ie, in a UK election, the country is divided into geographical constituencies and each constituency returns one member of parliament. That member of parliament also represents one 'point' for their political party - the 'points' get tallied, and whichever political party gets most 'points' gets to be the government and their leader gets to be the Prime Minister. Substitute constituencies for states and you've pretty much got the system for Presidential elections in the US - yes?

Yvonne

It works in both branches of government. In Congress, there are two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Back in colonial times, there were large states like Virginia and really small states like Rhode Island. The smaller states felt threatened by the power of the larger states who wanted representation to be only by population.

Since no Constitution would pass without agreement by most states, the Connecticut Compromise was born. The House would be by popular vote where each state is given a certain number of Congressional districts with a minimum of one. A census taken every ten years would determine how many districts each state would have according to population growth or shrinkage.

Each representative would essentially make up one point in the House and the party with the most points would be the majority party. Both parties vote for Speaker, which would always be won by the majority party, so the Speaker is elected by the entire House and is third in line for the presidency. Each party also votes for its own leadership with a majority/minority leader, a whip (vote counter), and conference chair.

The Senate was the compromise for the smaller states. Every state would have two Senators regardless of population, so California has as many as tiny Rhode Island. In the beginning, Senators were elected by state legislatures, so whoever had a majority in the state legislature would determine the Senators. In 1913, the 17'th Amendment was ratified, creating the direct election of Senators. The party with a majority would have a majority leader. There is no equivalent of Speaker for the Senate as the majority leader essentially runs the Senate. The Vice President is technically the President of the Senate but does not vote unless a tie exists.

The majority party elects as a ceremonial post the Senate President Pro Tempore, who becomes fourth in line for the presidency. That person is usually the person in the majority party who has been there the longest. Today that is Ted Stevens of Alaska. Come January, it'll be Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

In the presidency, each state has the number of electoral votes equal to the total number of House and Senate members (a minimum of 3). Plus Washington D.C. gets three even though it isn't a state.

The winner of that state's election get all of that state's electoral votes except for Maine, which gives two for the popular vote winner and one for whoever wins each Congressional district.

The electors then gather in Washington and vote on the president and then the vice president. If no one gets a majority of electoral votes, the election for president is then thrown to the House of Representatives where each state gets one vote, the vote going to whoever has the largest Congressional delegation. So if a state is split 4-1 Republican, that one vote goes to the Republican. If it's 3-2 Democratic, the vote goes to the Democrat. A tied delegation would go down as no vote. The election of the vice president would go to the Senate.

Electors may vote for anyone they choose and are not obligated by law to vote for the victor in their state, so there is the concept of the faithless elector who may end up throwing the election to someone else in a tight race. The last time there was one was in 2000 when one Gore elector abstained. In 2000 there was actually political pressure on Bush electors to vote for Gore because of Bush's lack of a popular vote win, but none broke ranks.

Hope all that stuff makes sense.

As far as the "glitches" go, yes, there are a lot of times when accidental errors happen in vote counting, but because of the frequency of that, there is also quite a bit of fraud that is nuck in trying to pass as a glitch.