Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Connect the Dots

Lovi called this morning to make sure I had voted. “Straight ticket Democrat, right?” she asked. “Yeah, right,” I said (we don’t have a straight ticket option anymore), “I pushed my little pen for straight ticket.” “You had to press something?” she asked, “Wow, you all are high tech. We got to connect the dots.”

I had to slip my ballot inside a box. There were holes in the box next to each choice, and I had to take a stylus and press down inside the hole of my choice. This stamped a black mark on my ballot. Seemed simple enough and fairly chad proof, until I removed the ballot from the box to slide it into the counting machine. I saw that some of my black marks were smaller than others, not completely round or filling the circle. I sure hope they counted those. But at least if they have to hand count, it’s not difficult to tell the difference between a black mark and a blank spot.

Lovi, on the other hand, had two dots next to each choice, and she had to draw a line between the two dots of her choice. Sounds pretty foolproof, unless you get someone that’s really nervous and shaking, that can’t draw a straight line. Who gets the vote if it waivers between the Damnocrat and Republican?

I’m hoping for the next election that we’ll get to paint by numbers.

Flo

4 comments:

HollyB said...

So what are these weird a$$ thingies at the beginning of the paragraphs? Am I the only one seeing them? Is my tumor creating visual hallucinations now as well as olfactory hallucinations?

Anonymous said...

To ID or not to ID - that was the question yesterday. Big sign as we enter the polling place "ID REQUIRED". Get to sign-in desk: don't need ID but "LawdHepEwe" if you misplace the torn off half of a post-it note that the "Polling Official" has to have to plug you into the electronic voting system.

Everyone lines up after signing in for the second time. Second time we have to present ID but don't have to show post-it note.

Voting machines are lined up against the north wall. People lining up in what looks like four lines for eight machines - at 4:00 it was four lines, later there were eight.

Being the orderly people we are, we went to the end of what we mistakenly thought was the end of one of those lines. Not. The "end of the line" was the lone person standing at the east end of the voting "holding pen" - he was the beginning of ANOTHER line - line #5. Seems the way they'd set up was for everyone line up east to west, then face north and take ONE GIANT STEP FORWARD when the first line of voters had been taken care of.

I kept expecting Brave Combo to swing through the doors and begin playing the "Hokey Pokey" each time we stepped forward. Of course I was destined for disappointment but it did give a giggle while waiting in line...

Was so sorry that the Kinkster didn't win in TX and that Rick "TP" Perry won again. At least if Kinky had won it would have life more interesting instead of more of the same old same old.

Flo said...

I went about 0900 and there wasn't much of a line, although from LawDog's post it sounds like there were record turnouts everywhere--for all the good it did. But no Hokey-Pokey for us.

Is it Holly's tumor, am I blind, or does anybody else see some weird thingies?

Anonymous said...

yeppers - there are weird thingies at the beginning of the paragraphs. I see them, too.