Whew. I'm done.

I served as a poll watcher today. Strangely, this did not involve stuffing dollars in g-strings. Instead I was watching for voting irregularities, people being unfairly denied the opportunity to vote, checking that machines were in proper working order, and ensuring that the precinct's vote tally procedures were followed.

It was actually very enjoyable, and whether I ever participate in another political campaign, I would be happy to participate in the Election Day action.

Like many of the horror stories you've heard today, the electronic voting machines did not start smoothly. In the case of the location I was at, it was a case of RTFM. There were two different precincts. The machines were set to only accept ballots from their particular precinct, and they set them up flip-flopped. So, for the first few hours, people were using only paper ballots. But the lines didn't back up. And nobody left because they couldn't vote on the electronic machine.

But once they got them up and running, they had the machines set up so that the screens were visible to the judges. When people were voting, they were blocking the screen (for the most part). But on principle, I made them spin them around.

One of the election judges was asking arriving voters for ID. I told him that our election laws specifically prohibit requiring ID's. As long as the signatures match the voter registration, the folks can vote.

In my county, more than half of the offices are held by Republicans. And most of them are running for re-election unopposed. Toward the end of the day, I was waiting for the final poll results, and the guy standing next to me was one of the Republican incumbents. He was in the polling place. He had on a satin jacket, with his campaign logo embroidered on it. If he were running against anyone else, I would have demanded that he leave. I consider wearing a campaign logo in the polling place to be unlawful campaigning. But as I looked at the poll results, less than 20% of the voters voted for him.

I turned in my results and came home. Now I'll watch the election results (off and on) for the next couple hours. Early results show an extremely close race.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 07, 2006 at 9:16 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.