Election Day
Nov. 5th, 2002 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geminigirlI voted on my way in to work this morning. I figured the lines at the polls would be shorter in the AM than at 4:30 or 5 when I was heading home. (I'm out of the office most of this afternoon, so I'm not sure exactly when I'll get home; we're giving HIV testing reults for a couple of hours.) I still had to wait quite a while...the A-K line was very long, the L-Z line, very short.
I'd never voted outside of New York before; when I was away, I voted in NY via absentee ballot. I’d never needed ID to vote before-I don’t know where my voter registration stuff from NY was…but I had to go in with my voter registration card and another ID (I took my social security card-my license would have been no good cause it’s still NY) and I noticed a few interesting differences-the main one being how close to the polling place (mine was a school) people were allowed to campaign. I think the law is 100 yards up in NY, but here there were signs right up to the door, and people campaigning right outside the door. Amazing. The other big thing was the voting machines…they were touch pad voting machines, not levers. You just had to touch the screen next to the name or answer (ballot questions) and the red light came on and when you were done, you pushed the “VOTE” button to record your answers. It was interesting.
Sadly, the Democrats didn’t even run a sacrificial candidate against the Republican incumbent here. John Warner (the republican senator) isn’t bad, (for a republican,) but running against him were two independent candidates, one of whom is really a Libertarian but ran as an independent and went around calling herself “a LaRouche Democrat” –I'd heard that the Democrats were going to take her to court to get her to stop calling herself that, though I never heard the result of that.
Civic duty done for today. Now for the rest of the stuff that needs to get done.
I'd never voted outside of New York before; when I was away, I voted in NY via absentee ballot. I’d never needed ID to vote before-I don’t know where my voter registration stuff from NY was…but I had to go in with my voter registration card and another ID (I took my social security card-my license would have been no good cause it’s still NY) and I noticed a few interesting differences-the main one being how close to the polling place (mine was a school) people were allowed to campaign. I think the law is 100 yards up in NY, but here there were signs right up to the door, and people campaigning right outside the door. Amazing. The other big thing was the voting machines…they were touch pad voting machines, not levers. You just had to touch the screen next to the name or answer (ballot questions) and the red light came on and when you were done, you pushed the “VOTE” button to record your answers. It was interesting.
Sadly, the Democrats didn’t even run a sacrificial candidate against the Republican incumbent here. John Warner (the republican senator) isn’t bad, (for a republican,) but running against him were two independent candidates, one of whom is really a Libertarian but ran as an independent and went around calling herself “a LaRouche Democrat” –I'd heard that the Democrats were going to take her to court to get her to stop calling herself that, though I never heard the result of that.
Civic duty done for today. Now for the rest of the stuff that needs to get done.
