Well I just got back from the polls. My first impression: Where did the privacy go? When the punch card system was in place, you went into a little booth and it felt like you were alone in your little room. Albeit folks could see your legs and probably the top of your head, but y'know you could make a face while you voted for someone you didn't like without broadcasting it around the room. This time I could see what the person next to me was voting for. So could anyone standing less than six feet behind me. I did like the paper copy in the little receipt window, although I heard that polls that had switched to Diebolds before didn't have this feature. All in all, I had a good experience. It was fairly quick, only about fifteen people in line in front of me.
The Diebold systems work with a smart card that they change the number on for each voter. The techs had little card readers that refreshed the card. I assume it prevents the same voter from voting twice or someone just picking up a card someone dropped and vote unregistered.
I understand what could be some of the issue with precinct level counts also. At least at my polling place, it didn't matter which machine you went to. There wasn't anything about the smart card that actually connected my registration with my vote, so I can only figure that the votes are tallied by ward and not precinct. Even using the printed copies at each precincts table wouldn't be valid either as several people in my line voted on a machine at another precinct's table since my line was more crowded than the other precincts'. I would've liked it if either my printed ballot, or some other printed number/barcode/whatever could be handed back to my precinct's table to tie my vote to that area or even better, tie to the checklist of registered voters. Just so that errors like someone sneaking into the line when it's crowded can be seen in a recount.
If you haven't voted yet, get out there already, polls close at 7:30pm(in ohio).
If you don't know where to vote, go to electionohio.com or the BOE's website. If you don't live in Ohio, google your board of elections and you should be able to find out where to go.
electionohio supposedly also has Live election results.(UPDATE: ...in a tiny number of counties)
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2 comments:
thanks for recommending the league of women voter's site...that's helped a lot.
my voting experience was pretty uneventful. everything was working in Parma!!
i know there are people who want their votes to remain anonymous, but i could care less.
i like how if you forget to vote for a category, the box is red at the end. overall, i think the touchscreen voting method is much better. there was a lady at the terminal behind me who accidentally hit the wrong thing, and she nearly went into hysterics. a poll worker went over and politely told her that if she just tapped the box again, it would deselect her choice. you can't really do that with punch cards.
Yeah, I did think that was a good feature. I also have to admit that I like the idea of electronic voting over the punch cards. The technology is there, so why not use it? I do wish they put a little more thought into the design and placement.
I just heard from someone else that their "booths" were a few feet apart so you couldn't see what people were voting, so that might only have been my experience, but I think that points to oversight and in this case there isn't much.
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