This morning I read where the Ohio Secretary of State has rejected thousands of voter registrations because the paper forms were printed on the wrong paper stock. There is a line of speculation that says the SoS (a Republican) did this because of this article in the New York Times which says the surge in voter registration is part of a push by the Democratic party.
In a completely unrelated story, guess who is now signed up to be an election clerk for Santa Clara county? Yep. I attend the three-hour training class this week, and I’ve already been assigned my polling station. Ironically enough, I have voted absentee for the past few years, so I haven’t actually been to a polling station in some time.
Reasons I prefer absentee ballots:
- I prefer a paper trail. I can’t tell you how little I trust the Diebold electronic voting machines.
- It’s nice to be able to sit at home with my ballot, surf the web to research individual candidates and ballot measures, and sip a cup of tea while I try to make an informed choice.
- Man, it’s convenient! You get to avoid the lines at the polling place, not to mention the deadbeats they hire to work the polls.
And of course, it’s not like the presidential election matters for those of us in California. Thanks to the Electoral College, the margin of victory for a presidential candidate in any given state doesn’t matter in the slightest. And since the polls already show CA to be solidly in Kerry’s camp, voting feels even more hollow than usual.
Still, I’m interested and excited to be doing this. It’ll be interesting to see what the process looks like from the inside, and I’ll enjoy the opportunity to see first-hand whether these voting machines cause any visible problems.
Stay tuned for further posts on this topic after the training class, and again after the election date.
You’re so cool.
Seriously.
Aww, that’s very nice of you to say. I don’t feel particularly cool about it, but I do admit to being kinda geekishly excited about it.
Hmnm….
What do you generally do to research candidates?
Re: Hmnm….
Nothing terribly exciting. There are a few political blogs that I follow semi regularly, and there’s always Google. I try hard to judge people on their own direct literature or speech transcripts, rather than the spin some opponent might put on things.
But still, particularly for small local races, there’s often nothing much to go on except the statement in the voters’ guide. Oh well, you do what you can.