Primary Election Day

[naomikritzer]

At around 10 a.m., I turned to Kiera and said, "I need to vote today. Do you want to go with me to vote now, or later?" She got all excited, and wanted to go vote immediately. She seemed surprised that we were going to vote at a church, and thought we ought to vote at a campground, but little kids sometimes come up with weird stuff.

I went and voted (for Becky Lourey, Keith Ellison, and Steve Kelley, if you're curious how I swung in the seriously contested races), requested extra "I Voted" stickers for Kiera and Molly (who was at school, but who might be disappointed not to get a sticker), and headed out.

On our way home, Kiera said, "When are we going to go voting?"

"I just voted," I said.

"No!" Kiera said. "Voting! Like at the campground! I want to ride in a vote!"

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh," I said, as the lightbulb finally went on. "I'm sorry, Kiera. We can't go boating today."

Fortunately, the disappointment was pretty short-lived. What's really funny is that she got sick of boating (canoeing, actually) pretty quickly when we did it while camping.

Comments

[squigsoup.livejournal.com]

When we went to vote for mayor a year or two ago, Rachel asked me if the guy we were voting for was a good singer. I realized at that point that her main experience with voting was "American Idol." *hangs head in shame*

[naomikritzer]

Yowch! ::snickers::

I'll admit that for a long time Molly associated voting with candy, because I'd buy a package of M&Ms to keep her occupied while I filled out my ballot.

[slystick.livejournal.com]

I had almost the exact same exchange with my Dad in 1976, and I think his phrasing was also, "Do you want to go with me to boat?" When we got to Anwatten (sp?) school, and got into the booth, my disappointment finally seeped up to the level of consciousness, but I don't remember complaining about it.

In 1978, we voted at Jefferson, and he let me pull the mechanical levers for him. I remember being concerned that the election officials were going to pull the curtains back and castigate me for voting illegally, but the fraud went undetected to this date.

[naomikritzer]

I remember that one of my grade school friends was allowed to pull the levers when her parents voted. I wasn't even allowed into the voting booth with my mother; I had to wait outside. I asked once if I could pull the levers, and was brusquely informed that this was illegal. I can't remember what they said when I pointed out that my friend Rebecca was allowed to do it.

I was a little disappointed when I finally got old enough to vote, and had no levers to pull. (I only voted once in Wisconsin, and that was by absentee ballot. Every Minnesota precinct I've voted in has used extremely simple paper ballots, filled in with a pen but counted electronically. I think these are a GREAT idea now, of course. Everyone should do it this way. It's cheap, efficient, intuitive to most people, hard to break, and difficult to rig.)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Canada uses this system pretty much exclusively, or maybe they actually count the ballots by hand (all I know is, you mark an X with a pencil in a circle next to your chosen candidate, and then you fold up your ballot and, while a returning officer watches you, stick it into a cardboard box).

The many weird and wonderful ways in which Americans are made to cast ballots in elections cause great hilarity up here, because everybody is like, "Why don't they just use pencils and paper, like normal people??"

Of course, we're normally only voting for one thing at a time...

[(Anonymous)]

The optical scan machine at my coworker the election judge's precinct broke down. It didn't count ballots for several hours until a replacement was brought in (the only replacement covering seventeen precincts, so if another one broke down, oh well).

Of course, this isn't a huge problem. People can put the ballots into a different slot for safekeeping, and the election judges can run them through later. But it means that they don't get to have their ballots verified, and there were, in fact, three spoiled ballots among the ones that weren't run through the machine with the voter present.

[notthatedburke.livejournal.com]

Sorry, 'twas me, I'm logged in now.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I love it!

DD has gone with me or DH or both of us to vote in quite a number of elections, and she's always disappointed by how not-exciting the experience is.

I saw my first polling station when I was 18 and went to vote myself for the first time. I had never gone with my parents to vote, because we lived in Canada and neither of them was a Canadian citizen at the time (my dad, who subsequently moved back to MI, still isn't). I did briefly work as an Enumerator for a federal election, way back when you got on the voters' list by talking to someone who came to your door with a clipboard, instead of by checking off a little box on your tax return.