I Voted. Did you?*

[johno]

20080205-140521-v705a
Originally uploaded by JohnO.

I was number 67 in to the machine at my polling place**, shortly after noon.

I commented how disgusted I was at such a low number.

The Precinct Captain responded that our area has lots and lots of mail in ballots.

Edit to add:

* If you are in the US in a state holding primaries today. Actually in California there are 7 state props and my county has 2 local props on the ballat, so it's not just primaries to vote on.

** My county went back to paper going into OCR machines. One per precinct station. No clue how many folks are in my precinct.

Comments

[idea-fairy.livejournal.com]

I voted by mail a week or so ago.

I recall a time when absentee ballots were just for people who couldn't make it to the polls, but now Santa Clara County (California) is encouraging people to vote by mail.

So it looks like the officials here would prefer voters to vote, in order of preference: (1) by mail, (2) electronically at the polls, (3) by paper ballot at the polls.

One grump: Even though I voted last week, political ads kept coming. One I found especially annoying was for that Indian gaming thing: A list of assertions, each preceded by the word FACT, sort of like a bulleted list. I didn't keep count, but I think I heard it at least three or four times on my car radio on the way to and from today's lunch get-together.

As for estimating the turnout, back when I was voting at the polling place, they would post a list of registered voters by the door. If you wanted to know how many voters were in a precinct, you could count the names on the list. You could also see which parties your neighbors were registered for.

I seem to recall seeing names of people who had voted crossed off (or highlighted or whatever) on that list. That wasn't done in real time, but they would update it several times over the course of the day. But that was many elections ago, so I don't know if it's still done that way today.