I just LOVE voting by mail! ! ! ! ! Even though DH & I haven't mailed in our ballots. :-) I will drop them off today in the roadside ballot box when I go into town. I've spoken to a couple of people who miss "going down to the shcool to vote" but the vast majority of people like to be able to sit with their books in front of them, fill out the ballot together and then drop them off (or mail them, if early enough) when it is convienient - ESPECIALLY if we are having a particularly icy or rainy season. Older people who find it harder to get around and anyone who has a reading problem like to be able to fill out the ballots in the comforts of their own home. As a left handed person, I always hated that those stupid little chains holding the punchy thing were TOO SHORT for me to handle comfortably. They were borderline long enough for right handed people, but they were definitely not long eough for me to hold in my left hand. I have to admit, though, that it is very annoying to be receiving those automated calls when we've already mailed our ballots in! ! ! Liz from Humbug
Same here, Joan, although some cities in the area use the schools as polling places. Those districts do have the day off. I never saw a school used as a polling site until I moved to Ohio.
Our schools are used as polling places and they do not call off school. The kids just have to work around the people coming in and out. I actually think it's a good idea so that kids see that people do vote.
Today's election day.....HALLELUJAH! No more political ads!!!!! :):):)
Or prerecorded telephone calls that tie up the phone for 15 minutes, even after you hang up. And what makes it even more frustrating is that we were offered early voting and we took care of it last Tuesday.
Funny - we had this discussion at work yesterday. I support GM - one of our major clients - and they DO have Election Day as a holiday. Apparently something the Auto Workers Union got put in years ago.
Around here lots of schools are polling places. I think that one of the counties actually had a "fall break" - kids were off Monday and Tuesday.
The polling place we worked at was a middle school, and there were lots of families coming in, and a definite "mommy rush hour" - suddenly the place was full of young moms with many small children. Got so bad that the chief election officer at the polling place had to go ask a couple of moms to "corral their kids" as the behaviour was unacceptable, and bothering other voters. We'd had to set up lots of tables besides the privacy booths for those using paper ballots - and there was a hord of 3-6 year olds just running around while their moms were either chatting in line waiting for the touch screen (electronic) machine, or at their place doing the paper ballots. It was wild - the kids had the toy cars going, just taking advantage of space, and being "free" . OTOH, there were lots of sweeties, and lots who wanted to see the process. One family - mom, and 5 stair-steps of kids - brought all the poll workers home-made chocolate lollies - with tags from "the smile-makers" . Evidently the group of kids call themselves the "smile-makers" .They were gorgeous - aged about 3-11 - and so nice.
We had a photog from the Wash Post - with permission from the electoral board - in to do pix. He'd visited a couple of other places, and at ours clearly had specific interests. Got a pic of a very pretty mom with her 3 lovely children - at the touch scren (but not the actual voting screen in the photo), and then he went for different ethnic groups. Especially those with children. Some of the pix are no doubt great.
It was very interesting - we had a lot of people voting for the first time, and regardless of your political beliefs - it was touching. They were so thrilled and serious about this. Africans, people from the middle East, lots of Indians, Eastern Europeans - all with new or pretty new citizenship. And families hauling in with kids, from work - rushing to get there. We had a couple that were so upset - they'd moved counties, thought their registration was changed - only to find the DMV had likely dropped the ball in forwarding the paperwork - and couldn't get to their other place in time. Another young couple - with infant along - she was in the rigth precinct, his hadn't been updated - so he was "you vote, at least one of us can count"
- though we were hopeful they could make it to the other precinct in time. We had people in there voting until about 7:45. (hours from 6 am - 7 pm ). We didn't get home til about 11. Fortunately our county had issued palm pilots (one of my jobs yesterday) that linked into the registration data base. The county had added, re-districted the precincts - so when people weren't in a poll book they got sent to me and I could look them up, find their info and send them to the right polling place.
It was a really interesting day. Touching when several people actually said to us "thank you for volunteering" . The dep chief & I had 1 of the 3 poll books, plus I had the "gadget" - amazingly - we processed 50 % more voters thru than either of the other 2 tables. But, we had the teamwork thing going. DH got to oversee the electronic voting, and the Optical Scanner (paper ballots get put by the voter into the scanner, and then dropped into a locked box). We had a lot of people vote by paper . Just a very interesting day - makes you want to write a thoughtful editorial. Interesting factoid - very hotly watched senatorial race here between Jim Webb and George Allen. The vote count from our precinct - they differed by
1 vote (and 1 vote is a provisional ballot - which means if it gets tossed byt the electoral board they'd be dead even in that precinct of a couple thousand actual votes cast). Amazing.
It's not really so much a fall break as teacher work days. It's the end of the quarter, so they use those days for teacher in-service days, parent-teacher conferences, and so forth as well as getting the kids out of the schools so it's not such a hassle with the voting. It seems to work reasonably well--might even encourage some voting, with the parents coming through the school for conferences on election day.
We did the teacher-conference with youngest one's teacher last night. Our last ever, as she's now in 5th grade and going to Middle School next year.
Her teacher had nothing but praise for her, which has been the case every year, but always nice to hear. "It's so good to end the evening with a child like yours, I had to 'offer suggestions' to some of the other parents!" Made me laugh, because I'm the child of a teacher, and I'd heard my dad "offering suggestions" over the phone to parents many a time!
Our closest polling place is the volunteer firehouse. It was probably packed beyond the capacity the fire marshall allows! lol
My union in NYC used to have Election Day as a holiday. Now it's a Floating Holiday - city offices are open, you can take it off (with approval) or you can take off another day (like adding it onto your vacation.) You have a year to use floating holidays (the other one is Lincoln's Birthday.) However schools are closed on Election Day which is good because most of them are polling places.
Alis>Funny - we had this discussion at work yesterday. I support GM - one of our
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