Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Voting Horror Stories?

Okay, so I'm an anxious person. I got to the polls this morning before 6 a.m. The polls were scheduled to open at 7 a.m. I was third in line of about 50 people by the time the polls opened.

I get up to the table, give them my name and they can't find it. That's okay, people misspell it all the time. Still nothing. The lady looks for my name in the City, County, and the State and says, "I'm sorry, but we're not showing you as a registered voter." I say, "Oh no you don't. Do I look familiar?" The lady says, "why yes you do, oh I know you, you worked the elections with us before." I say, "correct. I worked this polling place for the last Presidential election and the following municipal election as an Election Judge. I've also supervised the counting of absentee ballots numerous times for the Board of Elections as County Attorney. I've voted in EVERY election for the last 5 years I've lived in this state. There's no way I'm not in your system, and if I'm not, somebody's got a lot of explaining to do." So the lady persists looking for the next 15 minutes. She finally calls a supervisor over. He can't find me either. "Are you sure you're registered to vote?" He asks me. By then, other election workers come over to say hi to me and vouch that I am a registered voter and I should be in the system.

Well, eventually since nothing they do is bringing up my name, they then look up my address. There I am, a registered voter, including the other registered voters in the house. For some reason, my name was dropped from the names list and the address list wasn't cross referencing the names. So, they get that figured out and then discover, I'm in the wrong polling place.

Nope, not possible. Here's my voter registration card that says for Primaries I vote at location "A" and for general elections I vote at location "B." "Yep, that's what it says alright, but the computer says otherwise." So I go to the other location and wait in line all over again to vote. I did eventually get to vote, but I wonder, if so many election workers hadn't known me, would they have tried as hard to get to the bottom of the discrepancy, and also, how many other people's names have been dropped from the computer's list or aren't cross-referenced?

5 comments:

tweetey30 said...

Yikes.. that sounds horrible... Hope everything is better. I dont understand where your voting has anything to do with it as long as you showed up..

Anonymous said...

Every one who is a registered voter, should get a card in the mail, to verify a persons given polling place. In NYS, we have to sign a book, that has our name and address in the ledger. I have not been yet will be going after work, am so nervous, as to the outcome of this election. If what happened to you, happened to my husband, I know he would have said f--- it, and walked away,so sure am hoping stuff like your issue is not prevelant. I do not know if we have been changed to electronic machines, not that am aware of, think we are still using the lever system. Hope so.p

tshsmom said...

Oh no, it's contagious!
I vote in every election, and I'm NEVER in the book. Every election, I have to re-register at my polling place.
Like you, I'm lucky that all the workers know me. It's become a joke with them. I walk in, and they wave a registration card at me before I even get to the table.
Today a miracle happened. I was in the book! The workers were just as excited as I was. ;)

Larena said...

we vote by mail I delivered them to the court house box by hand, would push this fact on to higher people to have it looked into ....L

CyberKitten said...

How weird.........

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