the chutry experiment

I'm going on Friday. A full blog report will be forthcoming.

I voted on Monday, though my post did not actually reference much about the process except that to say that it was organized chaos. But I'll go into more detail here.

We ride up to the 4th Floor of the Fulton Government Building. It's chaos. Some people are sitting. Some are standing. There's no line. And some woman is yelling out people's names. Uhm, yeah.

So me and Randy stand in what we think is the line. We were wrong and some gentleman came up to us and asked if we needed the forms. He was wearing a suit, so I suspect he was either a poll monitor or just a nice guy and not an actual poll worker. We fill out the form, turn it in to the lady at the table and stand in another line. At the end of the line, we handed over our paperwork and ID to someone who checked it.

Then we waited in the mass of people waiting for their name to be called. It was kind of like Bingo. Once a person's name was called out, some people would cheer. It was quite interesting. Finally, my name was called and I entered the room and received my card and did my thing on my the computer screen. Then I gave it back to the man in the room.

The whole process took around 45 minutes, which according to news reports is a short line. And even though my early voting experience appeared to be disorganized, I felt much better about my voting being counted than I did when I early voted in the run-off election. At that time, there was one lady servicing everyone who wanted to vote. And I had to wait a long time to give her back my card.. and there was a stack sitting on the counter, so who knows.

Here's my original post from Monday:
http://jenrae.typepad.com/index/2004/10/i_voted.html

It appears the comment won't let me insert HTML.

Thanks, Jen and Dylan. I temporarily turned off HTML in comments becuse of comment spam, but especially for this entry, I think I'll start allowing it again.

Private/public spaces.... interesting view of the matter. I would venture that some other folks in other jurisdictions would envisage the space as continuous with many players distributed throughout its nodes all intent on preserving the integrity of the secret ballot process. Or an alternative view is to conceive of contiguous spaces that support the stages from preparation of ballots to their counting. Of course, many of those jurisdictions are not bound by custom to a de facto bipartisan situation.
Your post led me to a quick comparison between Canada
http://www.elections.ca/
And the United States and I found a paper on the Federal Election Commission
http://www.nssa.us/nssajrnl/22-2/htm/03.htm
Just compare the opening screens for the Elections Canada and the FEC site
http://www.fec.gov to understand what I'm getting at in terms of the multi-player support for democratic processes. Elections Canada spends money on public education (in more than the two official languages). Does the the FEC? The FEC seems to be a body limited to oversight of campaign financing.

In terms of the international context: "Elections Canada is a founding member of the Partnership for Electoral and Democratic Development (PEDD). PEDD was created in April 1999 and involves the following organizations, in addition to Elections Canada: IFES, an international, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that has undertaken activities related to democracy and governance in more than 100 countries since 1987; IDEA, an intergovernmental organization founded in 1995 to promote sustainable democracy and develop standards and guidelines for election administration; the United Nations Electoral Assistance Division (UN-EAD), which provides electoral assistance in numerous countries; and IFE, Mexico's non-partisan agency for electoral administration."

I apologize for what may appear to be blunt Canadian chauvanism. I just want to point out what the ethos is like elsewhere in a country with two official languages and formal policies on multiculturalism and programs for citizen participation.

I just looked at the Federal Election Commission website, and yes, the first image you see emphasizes that the FEC enforces campaign finance laws. The comparison between the organizations is interesting. This issue has come up occasionally in class this semester, with students noting the lack of information, especially.

And don't worry: I don't see it as an example of Canadian chauvanism.

I think this will be the biggest turn out in US History. Lots of early voters everywhere.

Voted today. My report is here.

Thanks for the report, Dylan. Steve, I agree about voter turnout. Everyone is talking about it.

What a great resource! Your entry is fast becoming a clearinghouse for first-person voting narratives.

I'll be posting mine tomorrow.

Thanks, Kari, and thanks for the reminder to re-post my request.

I voted early here in Texas, on Thursday. Stopped in on my way home from the office. I guess the time of day and the small size of the town in which I live influenced this, but the wait was literally nil. The elderly election workers were sitting around bored. Took me a while to find my voter registration card (I don't know why -- we just moved here for the start of the fall semester, and I slipped the card in my wallet as soon as it came, but it was in the least accessible part of my wallet, based on frequency of use -- and yes, I am always this anal about stupid little things).

So anyway, I went in, got 'verified,' and they handed me three paper ballots and said to pick one. I briefly wondered about this. It was a new thing for me, never had that happen. I presume it was to make sure I wasn't being handed a 'loaded' ballot -- i.e., by picking from a random assortment, election fraud is less likely. This is the only thing I can think of for that -- it was a little odd.

The ballot was a simple piece of paper with ovals next to candidate names. Like taking a scan-tron test, I had to fill in the ovals next to my choice of candidates (I also had the option of voting a straight party ticket for all elections, including local offices, by filling in the one party oval; I opted not to do this. I voted for candidates of different parties, but I probably wouldn't have done it even if voting for all one party --it just seems like taking the cheap way out. But then, I feel compelled to fill in the oval next to the names of people running uncontested, so what do I know.)

I filled in the ovals at a little voting "station" separated by cardboard from other stations, and then I slipped my ballot into a metal box and took my "I Voted" sticker.

I think I take voting for granted. This election season has been wearying and annoying. I am one of those people who values real debate but sees mostly yelling and punditry from both sides, and I'm sick of it. So while I knew who I was going to vote for, I would have enjoyed seeing the level of debate in this country raised to the point that people actually listened to each other rather than waiting for pauses so they could attack back. It depresses me, and it made me feel like voting and elections in this country don't really reflect debate and consideration but rather knee-jerk political reactions to a lot of hate-filled invective.

Sorry for the negativity -- you asked for my voting narrative :-)

I want the good and the bad stories, so I appreciate your honesty. There are things about the process that I find tremendously unsatisfying. Interesting that you didn't encounter long lines where you voted early. I wonder if that's due to a lack of publicity for early voting in Texas or some other factor? Georgia has publicized early voting pretty heavily, and apparently the lines have been fairly long....

Some other examples of first-person voter narratives: The Rude Pundit had some problems with touch screen voting, and like me, the Rude One is soliciting stories about your voting experiences. Atrios had to wait in a "nontrivial line" (good news, I believe), but otherwise had no problems. I'm not writing this from my home computer, so I'm unable to update this entry right now. I'll try to add a few more voter narratives as I find them.

Oh, and Meteor Blades at Daily Kos is also collecting voting narratives. Since they have more traffic than I do, there are a few more narratives to choose from, but I'd still appreciate any voting stories you wish to share.

One Dartmouth student (a Bush supporter, in this case) is live-blogging the election with updates throughout the day. Interesting to follow his story as it develops.

Here's my post on Election Protection monitoring this morning.

I trackbacked my post. Thanks for the resource chuck.

Not entirely sure about how trackbacks work, but my entry about voting is here.

I've enjoyed reading all the voting encounters.

I've got the first part of my election protection poll-watching story up now. I should have a second installment up tonight.

Thanks everyone. The link works just as well, Cassie, so no problem. I just got home from my little voting adventure, so a report is coming soon.

Is anyone else getting as excited as I am? I feel like it is Christmas mixed with Superbowl Sunday all wrapped up in one.

My experience is here:
http://sudalexicon.blogspot.com/

It has been an incredible day!
Hypatia

My experience is here:
http://www.notmike.com/

It is right below the post about some college-age friends of mine who were denied the right to vote because their absentee ballots were never mailed.

My experience was painless. I got there at 6 AM, voted at 6:05, and was home before 6:10. The Sequoia electronic voting machines were not at all what I expected.

Here's the more upbeat part two of my poll monitoring narrative.

I spent lots of time at the polls in my Florida neighborhood over the past couple of weeks, first as an early voter, then as a poll greeter. My experiences are here.