I voted in person today using ink and paper, inside this church. No eat-your-vote machines in sight — though thousands of voters did use them in early voting procedures here in LA county. None of those had paper trails, but local election supervisors claim they were built with “systemic triple redundancy” to prevent errors (right).
My short-term memory sucks, so I spent some time over the weekend reading up on obscure ballot measures and scribbling notes on a cheat sheet so I could just walk in, fill in the dots, then leave.
When I showed up at the voting site mid-day, there were no lines — just bored volunteer pollsters gnawing on pizza crusts, and a few betruckerhatted hipsters brooding over ballots in booths. I filled mine out in a few minutes, then handed it in to an elderly black lady seated behind a card table covered with jolly ranchers and sweet tarts (either voting incentives or Halloween leftovers, or both).
“That was fast!” she said. I told her I’d spent time at home thinking about my choices, and already knew what I’d vote for when I arrived. “That’s right, honey,” she said. “If people don’t know what they want by now, just when do they plan to know?” Link to full-size phonecam snapshot of my polling site in LA’s Silverlake neighborhood.
Over on Dan Gillmor’s blog, there are dispatches from a less tranquil precinct: Columbus, Ohio. Dan says, “Chris Kelly, a Bay Area lawyer, is one of the Democrats who’s traveled to Ohio this week to keep an eye on the Republican ballot-challengers.” Link. Dan also shares his first-person account of Bay Area e-voting misinfo and long lines here.
