A fine day to be an American.
Well, it's probably time for the obligatory voting experience post. Actually, this one is kind of interesting.
Last night, a couple of my students told me that people were estimating extremely long lines at the polls in Tempe this morning, to the tune of six-hour waits. Even with all of the people who participated in early voting. Actually, apparently even early voting was leading to long waits on the last couple of days.
So I considered things and decided it would be wise to head to the polls early. Well, the polls opened at 6, so that meant that R and I got up at 5:20 and ambled on over to wait at 5:30. At the time we arrived, there were already about 20 people in line, and by 6 there were about 50 people lined up and ready to go. We like our democratic privileges. Everybody was pretty cheerful, and it was nice to see a mix of all sorts of people enthusiastic about voting. I just hope that people who bother to get politically involved for huge national elections ALSO decide to get involved in other elections. And I hope that people bothered to study up on all of the other stuff on the ballot, which included some important school bond measures and some important initiatives (especially that stupid Proposition 102 to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage--not to get opinionated about it or anything).
Anyway. I had a bit of drama at the polls. It wasn't the same sort of drama as the last time I voted, when the poll workers didn't know the rules for proper forms of identification. [Thanks to a proposition about two years ago, one must show photo identification at the polls to vote. If one's address doesn't match one's registered voting address, trouble can ensue because then one must present two alternate forms of identification with both name and address. Since Arizona is partially run by Libertarians, our driver's licenses don't expire until we turn 65, and we can update our addresses online. That means that my license still states the address I had when I first moved to Tempe although it is updated in Arizona's database. I'm perfectly capable of bringing other forms of identification with me, but poll workers don't always know what to do when they're handed something other than a current driver's license.]
But that was last time.
This time, I made it most of the way through the gauntlet without any problems. We have a pretty extensive ballot, with approximately 4,872 judges* and 3,962,804 Initiatives,* but I'd put together a cheat-sheet for myself, and happily drew lots of lines to connect lots of arrows that indicated my selections. At the very end, I sent my ballot through a scanner to check it. Lo and behold, problems arose. The machine indicated that I had over-voted (i.e. voted for more than the number of things I should have selected) on some of the questions. But I double-checked all of it, and I hadn't over-voted. The real problem is that I am left-handed, and the fresh pens that were put in each of the polling stations were full of ink that ended up smudging--and not even very badly. Because the machine was reading indistinct smudges, it was impossible to tell which smudges were leading the machine to register over-voting. And I definitely wanted to vote specifically on all of the things that I voted on.
So I had to write "spoiled" in huge letters across my ballot, and they gave me a new one to fill out all over again.
On the second round, I started voting too fast and ended up voting in favor of something I'm opposed to. So again I had to write "spoiled" across my ballot and learned that I'd only get one more chance to get it right. Fortunately, the third time was the charm and I successfully voted. Stupid scanner machines. If you were to read my first ballot by hand, it would have been completely legible and clear about my selections.
And that is all.
*slight exaggerations, perhaps
Last night, a couple of my students told me that people were estimating extremely long lines at the polls in Tempe this morning, to the tune of six-hour waits. Even with all of the people who participated in early voting. Actually, apparently even early voting was leading to long waits on the last couple of days.
So I considered things and decided it would be wise to head to the polls early. Well, the polls opened at 6, so that meant that R and I got up at 5:20 and ambled on over to wait at 5:30. At the time we arrived, there were already about 20 people in line, and by 6 there were about 50 people lined up and ready to go. We like our democratic privileges. Everybody was pretty cheerful, and it was nice to see a mix of all sorts of people enthusiastic about voting. I just hope that people who bother to get politically involved for huge national elections ALSO decide to get involved in other elections. And I hope that people bothered to study up on all of the other stuff on the ballot, which included some important school bond measures and some important initiatives (especially that stupid Proposition 102 to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage--not to get opinionated about it or anything).
Anyway. I had a bit of drama at the polls. It wasn't the same sort of drama as the last time I voted, when the poll workers didn't know the rules for proper forms of identification. [Thanks to a proposition about two years ago, one must show photo identification at the polls to vote. If one's address doesn't match one's registered voting address, trouble can ensue because then one must present two alternate forms of identification with both name and address. Since Arizona is partially run by Libertarians, our driver's licenses don't expire until we turn 65, and we can update our addresses online. That means that my license still states the address I had when I first moved to Tempe although it is updated in Arizona's database. I'm perfectly capable of bringing other forms of identification with me, but poll workers don't always know what to do when they're handed something other than a current driver's license.]
But that was last time.
This time, I made it most of the way through the gauntlet without any problems. We have a pretty extensive ballot, with approximately 4,872 judges* and 3,962,804 Initiatives,* but I'd put together a cheat-sheet for myself, and happily drew lots of lines to connect lots of arrows that indicated my selections. At the very end, I sent my ballot through a scanner to check it. Lo and behold, problems arose. The machine indicated that I had over-voted (i.e. voted for more than the number of things I should have selected) on some of the questions. But I double-checked all of it, and I hadn't over-voted. The real problem is that I am left-handed, and the fresh pens that were put in each of the polling stations were full of ink that ended up smudging--and not even very badly. Because the machine was reading indistinct smudges, it was impossible to tell which smudges were leading the machine to register over-voting. And I definitely wanted to vote specifically on all of the things that I voted on.
So I had to write "spoiled" in huge letters across my ballot, and they gave me a new one to fill out all over again.
On the second round, I started voting too fast and ended up voting in favor of something I'm opposed to. So again I had to write "spoiled" across my ballot and learned that I'd only get one more chance to get it right. Fortunately, the third time was the charm and I successfully voted. Stupid scanner machines. If you were to read my first ballot by hand, it would have been completely legible and clear about my selections.
And that is all.
*slight exaggerations, perhaps
