I Voted! Kinda... Sorta... I Think...
I just got back from early voting. Wow! Democracy in action! It only took me two hours.
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YEP, TWO FUCKING HOURS! In a cramped library, with cranky babies and a lot of B.O. Now I know what voting in Afghanistan must be like.
First let me state for the record that I am *pretty* okay with the touch screen voting system. I trained poll workers for the 2002 gubernatorial election and I worked tech support during the 2002 primaries and Election Day. Yes, there are glitches, and I prefer optical scan ballots, but in the end, there are no hanging chads and most chimps can figure out how the touch screens work and while YES we need a PAPER TRAIL (vote MacKenna if you feel the same way), this is the system and we have to work with what we got.
So the line was long to begin with. I went to Robert Saunders Library on Nebraska, figuring the ‘hood was a great place to early vote. I was wrong. Seemed everyone was fixin’ to raise up and get their vote on. Lots of Kerry supporters which was awesome. When you stand in line with someone for two hours you get to know what or how they are going to vote. If I may be so bold as to be my own exit poll… Democrats are looking pretty good.
But I digress.
Let me explain the nuts and bolts of early voting: Because you are not voting in your preceint, there have to be certain safeguards in place to make sure you don’t early vote in several locations in one day. (Vote Early, NOT Often). So the Supervisor of Elections, Buddy Freddy *ahem* Buddy Johnson, has established a database of registered voters who can be verified and marked as voted. This database is accessed via the internet on laptops computers. It is basically, one big electronic voting book.
The server went down.
You IT geeks know as well as I do that this is bullshit. Either it’s an excuse or it’s a really inexcusable system. There are what, 8 remote voting locations for early voting in Hillsborough County? Each location has 2 laptops… that’s 16 computers… tops? What kind of fucking server is that? It just crashes when 16 computers dial into it? I’m sure there are better excuses/reasons, but that‘s the one we got and I don’t buy it.
So after waiting in line for about 45 minutes (only four voting machines… about ten to0 few), the server goes down.
Everything. Shuts. Down.
After about 30 minutes, I walk outside to make sure there are poll watchers. If there weren’t I was calling Kerry-Edwards and telling them to get their happy asses down to the early voting locations. Turns out we had three poll watchers and they were all very cool. Basically, they were tracking voter disenfranchisement, via the number of voters who left line, or chose not to vote due to the excessive wait time. They also recorded complaints.
So nobody in Hillsborough County is early voting for over an hour (sending lines streaming out the library) because “the server is down.”
I talked to the poll workers (who you need to thank when you vote, whenever you vote, because they are old and slow and believe in civil service and if you think they’re idiots, then you can work the next election) they seemed flustered and were doing their best.
Finally it was agreed that each voter would be called in and checked “manually.” At this point those folks in line with cheri067 and I looked over at me to see if this was okay. The poll workers kept saying, “You’ll vote manually.” This was not making anybody feel better so I said, “Okay, what’s going to happen is the same as if you were voting in your preceint on Nov. 2nd. Say you walk up to the poll workers and they can’t find your name in the spiral book of all registered voters in your preceint. The poll workers next step is to call a phone bank, which is a group of election workers who work off the database and verify voters who may not have made the rolls for whatever reason. These folks are then cleared to vote “manually” and will be processed at a later date.”
This calmed everybody down. I think I could have scored with one of the old poll workers… if I was into that sort of thing.
So they called us in… verified us and we went and voted.
Then came the CRAZY LADY.
I’m at the touch screen and some crazy bitch comes in demanding a poll watcher and screaming about how we all need to stop voting because this is all illegal.
Oh boy. I love democracy.
I normally cry when I vote. Dorky… yes, but I love the whole process and the freedom I have to do so. This year, I was sweating, the room smelled like Warren Sapp’s jock strap (post game), babies were crying and Crazy Crazerstein was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Needless, I did not cry.
So they removed Crazy and I announced loudly and with much flourish, “I JUST VOTED EVERYBODY! WOO-HOO!” I got lots of applause and the poll workers laughed, which they probably needed.
I went outside and Crazy is now yelling at the poll watchers. They aren’t helping matters, simply saying “Well, they’re voting now okay, so it’s okay.” I explain the system to the poll watchers the way I wrote above. They seemed relieved that somebody knew what was going on.
SO now I’m at work. Where I don’t need to be. This is a battleground state goddamnit. I need to be at a polling place, I know this system and if I can keep one more person in line or let one voter know their vote “probably “will be counted… aaaargh! What am I doing here?
Go Vote. And clear some time in your schedule to do so.
…
…
…
YEP, TWO FUCKING HOURS! In a cramped library, with cranky babies and a lot of B.O. Now I know what voting in Afghanistan must be like.
First let me state for the record that I am *pretty* okay with the touch screen voting system. I trained poll workers for the 2002 gubernatorial election and I worked tech support during the 2002 primaries and Election Day. Yes, there are glitches, and I prefer optical scan ballots, but in the end, there are no hanging chads and most chimps can figure out how the touch screens work and while YES we need a PAPER TRAIL (vote MacKenna if you feel the same way), this is the system and we have to work with what we got.
So the line was long to begin with. I went to Robert Saunders Library on Nebraska, figuring the ‘hood was a great place to early vote. I was wrong. Seemed everyone was fixin’ to raise up and get their vote on. Lots of Kerry supporters which was awesome. When you stand in line with someone for two hours you get to know what or how they are going to vote. If I may be so bold as to be my own exit poll… Democrats are looking pretty good.
But I digress.
Let me explain the nuts and bolts of early voting: Because you are not voting in your preceint, there have to be certain safeguards in place to make sure you don’t early vote in several locations in one day. (Vote Early, NOT Often). So the Supervisor of Elections, Buddy Freddy *ahem* Buddy Johnson, has established a database of registered voters who can be verified and marked as voted. This database is accessed via the internet on laptops computers. It is basically, one big electronic voting book.
The server went down.
You IT geeks know as well as I do that this is bullshit. Either it’s an excuse or it’s a really inexcusable system. There are what, 8 remote voting locations for early voting in Hillsborough County? Each location has 2 laptops… that’s 16 computers… tops? What kind of fucking server is that? It just crashes when 16 computers dial into it? I’m sure there are better excuses/reasons, but that‘s the one we got and I don’t buy it.
So after waiting in line for about 45 minutes (only four voting machines… about ten to0 few), the server goes down.
Everything. Shuts. Down.
After about 30 minutes, I walk outside to make sure there are poll watchers. If there weren’t I was calling Kerry-Edwards and telling them to get their happy asses down to the early voting locations. Turns out we had three poll watchers and they were all very cool. Basically, they were tracking voter disenfranchisement, via the number of voters who left line, or chose not to vote due to the excessive wait time. They also recorded complaints.
So nobody in Hillsborough County is early voting for over an hour (sending lines streaming out the library) because “the server is down.”
I talked to the poll workers (who you need to thank when you vote, whenever you vote, because they are old and slow and believe in civil service and if you think they’re idiots, then you can work the next election) they seemed flustered and were doing their best.
Finally it was agreed that each voter would be called in and checked “manually.” At this point those folks in line with cheri067 and I looked over at me to see if this was okay. The poll workers kept saying, “You’ll vote manually.” This was not making anybody feel better so I said, “Okay, what’s going to happen is the same as if you were voting in your preceint on Nov. 2nd. Say you walk up to the poll workers and they can’t find your name in the spiral book of all registered voters in your preceint. The poll workers next step is to call a phone bank, which is a group of election workers who work off the database and verify voters who may not have made the rolls for whatever reason. These folks are then cleared to vote “manually” and will be processed at a later date.”
This calmed everybody down. I think I could have scored with one of the old poll workers… if I was into that sort of thing.
So they called us in… verified us and we went and voted.
Then came the CRAZY LADY.
I’m at the touch screen and some crazy bitch comes in demanding a poll watcher and screaming about how we all need to stop voting because this is all illegal.
Oh boy. I love democracy.
I normally cry when I vote. Dorky… yes, but I love the whole process and the freedom I have to do so. This year, I was sweating, the room smelled like Warren Sapp’s jock strap (post game), babies were crying and Crazy Crazerstein was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Needless, I did not cry.
So they removed Crazy and I announced loudly and with much flourish, “I JUST VOTED EVERYBODY! WOO-HOO!” I got lots of applause and the poll workers laughed, which they probably needed.
I went outside and Crazy is now yelling at the poll watchers. They aren’t helping matters, simply saying “Well, they’re voting now okay, so it’s okay.” I explain the system to the poll watchers the way I wrote above. They seemed relieved that somebody knew what was going on.
SO now I’m at work. Where I don’t need to be. This is a battleground state goddamnit. I need to be at a polling place, I know this system and if I can keep one more person in line or let one voter know their vote “probably “will be counted… aaaargh! What am I doing here?
Go Vote. And clear some time in your schedule to do so.