posted
There's a reason McCain said that, and I don't think it's based on hard data.
Saying that exit polls are Democratically biased (like the media, everyone on the other side of the oceans, and apparently, reality) might give people who look at exit polls throughout the day a good reason to head to the polls when they might otherwise think "what's the point?" In otherwords, if exit polls show Democratic wins across the board, McCain saying "don't trust them, still vote for me!" is a way to rally the troops.
Besides, the McCain campaign thinks that EVERYTHING is biased for liberals. It's amazing, with our magical powers of coersion and our socialist takeover in the offing, that we even let McCain put his name on the ballots.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
An hour and forty minute wait for me, arriving at the polls at 7:23. I was voter number 311, so I think they need a better set up if they're only moving 150 through an hour.
That said, I was extremely pleased with how they were handling new voters. Minnesota has same day registration, and a volunteer was walking the line handing people the registration sheet they needed to fill out so they could do it while they waited, and making sure they had the identification or documents they needed to prove they lived in the ward. It all seemed to go very smoothly, and there were a LOT of new registrants, and by far the highest level of minority turn out I've ever seen at my polling place. Pretty cool.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Mixed result. I got to verify my registration and vote within ten minutes.
Diane was tied up for over an hour.
Diane uses a wheelchair and has limited arm mobility.
The computerized accessible equipment didn't work - printer was offline and couldn't register her vote. Over 30 minutes of phone calls to try to problem-solve with no luck.
Next - try for a paper ballot. They give her a form that is actually one that is for a person filling out a *provisional* ballot (your registration can't be verified), and she balked at signing that. Finally, they found an "emergency ballot" form, which gets your paper ballot into an envelope to be sent in and counted. By that time, she had concerns about her vote getting counted by way of paper ballot.
So she opted for me going into the voting booth with her and pulling the levers for her. She trusts me, we both know who we're voting for, but she shouldn't have had to resort to that.
We're hearing there are widespread problems with the accessible voting machines right now that we're in the office.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I showed up shortly before 8, and was surprised to see that there was very little line at all. I'd guess that there were probably 9 people ahead of me in line. I opted to fill out a paper ballot, which meant that I was able to bypass what little line there was (since they were all waiting to use the electronic machines).
I was a little surprised, outside the polling place, to find that while there were representatives of the Democratic party handing out "voting guides", they didn't have any republican counterparts.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Minnesota uses paper ballots and a counting machine. There was not a wait to feed your ballot into the machine, there was a wait to get into one of the stations to fill out your paper ballot. If we had been in a larger room with twice the number of stations, people could have moved through twice as fast and the machine still wouldn't have been the hold up. So in my polling place, it was indeed a better set-up that was needed.
We were in a community center in a park, in about a 20' x 30' room, with tables along one wall to pick up your ballot and voting stations along the other wall. There is a junior high school 4 blocks away, if they had been set up in the gym there I bet there wouldn't have been any wait at all. Or, if they would have had the ballot tables in the vestibule outside the room and stations all the wall around the room they could have accomplished the same thing. The stations are just plastic tables tall enough to write at standing up with a shield on each side so your neighbor can't see your vote. If they don't have more of those, which would surprise me, if they were set up in a gym they could easily just use regular tables spaced out for privacy.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
sndrake, one of the people behind me in line asked about accessible voting, as she was planning on coming back later with her father, who uses a wheelchair. The line outside the polling place was quite long and parts of it were on a steep hill. The initial answer was that he'd have to wait in line anyway, which she didn't accept, as at the old polling place they had always brought him to the front of the line. She talked to a couple more people, and they agreed that when she brought him she could pull up by the door and they would bring the ballot out for him to vote, and she would walk it in and feed it into the machine. She also pointed out to them that there was a woman in line on the hill with a cane who didn't look too stable, and they went over the her and offered to bring her to the head of the line to vote.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Where I voted, if there were people who had trouble standing in line, the poll worker would let the voter sit up near the front of the line until it was that person's turn to vote. When the line "caught up" to where the voter would have been standing.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Saying that exit polls are Democratically biased (like the media, everyone on the other side of the oceans, and apparently, reality) might give people who look at exit polls throughout the day a good reason to head to the polls when they might otherwise think "what's the point?" In otherwords, if exit polls show Democratic wins across the board, McCain saying "don't trust them, still vote for me!" is a way to rally the troops.
And there is another possible reason -- the election really is rigged and the McCain campaign are trying to prepare people to dismiss the discrepancies between the polls the vote tallies.
I really really hope that I have become too cynical and that I will be soundly proven to be a conspiracy theory wacko by morning but comments that have been coming from the McCain camp of late arouse my deepest fears about American democracy.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I apologize, eljay. In most places, it seems to really be a matter of resources, either ballots, ballot readers, or poll workers.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Where I voted, if there were people who had trouble standing in line, the poll worker would let the voter sit up near the front of the line until it was that person's turn to vote. When the line "caught up" to where the voter would have been standing.
That's how they were handling it where I voted too.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Rabbit- I'm a long time red sox fan, so its hard for me to shake the fear that something will go wrong at the very end. I have this deep nervousness that somehow PA, VA, and CO will go to mccain, despite at least 6 weeks in each state since the last time mccain had a poll that showed him in the lead.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I showed up at about 8:30 and had no wait whatsoever. I was surprised. I hope voting picks up throughout the day here in ID.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I showed up at 5:30 for the polls to open at 6:00, and there was already a line. By the time the polls opened, the line was three blocks long.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
So much for plan A. The 45-60 minutes line stretching down the block I could have dealt with. Not finding any parking for blocks around was more of a problem. Plan B was to vote provisionally at the polling place upstairs from where I work, but that seems to mean I can't vote on any city measures (since I work in West Hollywood, not L.A. proper). So I guess it's plan C -- vote after work.
At least the polls don't close until 8.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Walked in with Teres, got her signed in (I voted absentee), she voted, we left. Maybe 10 minutes, including getting in and out of the car.
Line moved quickly, there were three times the voting station I'm used to seeing there, and they even gave me an "I Voted" sticker when I asked for one
However, this was around 10:30 or so. My housemate voted on the way home from work early this morning and had a 45-minute wait.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Chris, I'm curious as to why you voted absentee and then actually went to the polls on election day?
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:sndrake, one of the people behind me in line asked about accessible voting, as she was planning on coming back later with her father, who uses a wheelchair. The line outside the polling place was quite long and parts of it were on a steep hill. The initial answer was that he'd have to wait in line anyway, which she didn't accept, as at the old polling place they had always brought him to the front of the line. She talked to a couple more people, and they agreed that when she brought him she could pull up by the door and they would bring the ballot out for him to vote, and she would walk it in and feed it into the machine. She also pointed out to them that there was a woman in line on the hill with a cane who didn't look too stable, and they went over the her and offered to bring her to the head of the line to vote.
Eljay,
here in this particular county in NYS (don't know about the rest of the state), they've put a lot of investment into the technology. Diane has actually been involved in training people with disabilities how to use it.
It looks like they didn't spend enough time training the poll workers, testing the technology, or briefing workers on back-up plans.
The workers are paid for the time they do today (a pretty nominal fee), but I believe the rest of what they do is totally voluntary. In the case of what we're seeing with what happened to Diane and other stories - it's more a matter of resources. In this case, though, the issue is spending more time and money on training people and testing the technology.
I don't particularly blame the people who were working there this morning. They were unhappy things weren't working -- they really want people to be able to come in and vote - and not go through these hassles.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: To keep his wife company?
The question wasn't why he went to the poll even though he cast an absentee ballot. It was why did he cast the absentee ballot in the first place.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Almost forgot. One other option that was *supposed* to be available. One of the voting booths was allegedly one that could be lowered so that Diane or other wheelchair users could use it.
No one at the polling place knew how to lower it or could figure it out. Training again.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Our polling location used Scantron sheets that read Sharpie marker, instead of #2 pencil. I thought it worked quite well - you get the convenience of electronically recorded voting while still maintaining a paper trail.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
In at 10:05, out at 10:15. Lines were short. There was a shortage of booths, so some people were filling out their ballots on desks and out in the courtyard. The single counting machine kept up easily, despite having to be emptied just when I arrived.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
Those points about the inadequacy of exit polling are ridiculous. In the Utah Colleges Exit Poll we are explicitly not permitted to help people fill out their survey, unless they are blind and require us to read it for them.
Cluster sampling is a perfectly acceptable way to glean statistics. Many studies regarding economics and education are done with cluster sampling. It does not matter if those willing to help out in exit polls are more Democratic or otherwise, party affiliation does nothing to affect the outcome of a solidly constructed poll.
Why does it matter if the poll taker cannot always get EXACTLY to the Nth voter? Sometimes the Nth voter refuses to take the survey, and we just move on to the next Nth voter. Once in a while getting the Nth + 1 voter does nothing to effect the randomness of a survey unless the pollster deliberately avoids the Nth.
Utah Colleges Exit Poll is going to be at it's designated polling places from the time polls open until they actually close. The results of our study are not leaked or published until polls are closed.
It bothers me that McCain is taking this cheap shot at exit pollers as other tactics actually influence the vote such as, "voter registration check" phone calls which are explicitly harmful. Exit polling is critical for solid research regarding what sorts of people are voting in this election and who they are voting for.
Contrary to my fears in my disenfranchised thread I managed to eek out my vote by showing up just as the polls opened. I made it to work without a minute to spare and now I am off to do some exit polling.
I'll post my experience at my polling station when I get home.
Also Mrs. BB was super proud to have voted in her first election, I'm very proud of her for carefully considering how she wanted to vote.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: I apologize, eljay. In most places, it seems to really be a matter of resources, either ballots, ballot readers, or poll workers.
It is utterly unacceptable to me if it is as you say, that certain states are simply not equipped to process the votes of all their voters. Given years to prepare for this one day, I am saddenned that there continue to be such problems. I realize there will always be problems, but honestly, if I were a local official, I would have been running around for months with the worst-case-scenario mindset.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:If “Dandy” Don Meredith were to call the election results instead of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, then he’d be singing his signature “Turn out the lights, the party’s over” for John McCain. At least in the towns of Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, New Hampshire.
The two little towns in the northern part of the Granite State have a tradition of voting at midnight and then releasing their results shortly thereafter.
The verdict this year? Obama in a landslide.
The results
Between the two towns, Obama received 32 votes while John McCain tallied 16 votes. Even Ron Paul got some action with two people voting for him.
posted
I find it odd that you clearly need more people and yet you have all this exit polling going on, using up great numbers of potential volunteers for the actual polling.
In Canada, there is no exit polling (at least not as a matter of course), there are up to 500 ballots per polling station, you can vote in about 30 seconds and everybody just waits for the official count to hear the results.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
So I voted two weeks ago, which meant I did not get my "I voted" sticker.
Today at my mom's group, I found out that local businesses are offering freebies to votres -- Free coffee from Starbuck's, free sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, free ice cream from Ben and Jerry's,e tc. That's not fair! I voted. I just don't have my sticker.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I got a sticker when I voted last week. I bet that you could tell the Starbucks people that you voted early and it would be okay.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Those points about the inadequacy of exit polling are ridiculous...Why does it matter if the poll taker cannot always get EXACTLY to the Nth voter? Sometimes the Nth voter refuses to take the survey, and we just move on to the next Nth voter. Once in a while getting the Nth + 1 voter does nothing to effect the randomness of a survey unless the pollster deliberately avoids the Nth.
Because exit polls are voluntary, they are susceptible to self-selection bias. When the Nth voter refuses to speak with you, it might be for reasons independent of party affiliation or how they voted, or it might not be. If it isn't, then exit polls need to account for the selection bias (here's the best way, if you know the sampling distribution).
The results of 2004 indicate either that that election was rigged (see Rabbit's pessimistic assertion above) or that exit polls exhibited a significant uncorrected selection bias (which I find much more likely). One hypothesis is that since exit pollsters are disproportionately college students, and college students as a whole are recognized as being predominantly Democrats, Republicans would deliberately avoid taking the exit polls, resulting in a statistically significant non-uniformity in the poll sampling distribution.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Starbucks at least has changed it to a free coffee (brewed only) for everyone, because it's been pointed out that it's illegal to offer gifts as incentive for voting.
----
Teshi, a lot of the exit polling isn't done by volunteers, it's paid people who work for one of the polling companies. Some of it is volunteers, of course, like the one BlackBlade is taking part in. But not all.
At my polling station I was the 311th voter two hours after the polls opened. 500 ballots wouldn't cut it by far. And most of the poll workers are paid, not volunteers.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: So I voted two weeks ago, which meant I did not get my "I voted" sticker.
Today at my mom's group, I found out that local businesses are offering freebies to votres -- Free coffee from Starbuck's, free sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, free ice cream from Ben and Jerry's,e tc. That's not fair! I voted. I just don't have my sticker.
Actually, none of them can require a voting sticker to give out the free stuff. Otherwise you run into problems with the law, since you aren't suppose to give out rewards for voting.
If you go in and ask for the free whatever, they have to give it to you. If you in & ask nicely, mentioning that you voted earlier by absentee, I'm sure they'd give it to you willingly.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: Today at my mom's group, I found out that local businesses are offering freebies to votres -- Free coffee from Starbuck's, free sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, free ice cream from Ben and Jerry's,e tc. That's not fair!
Not only is it not fair, it's also not legal. (Also, according to the statement from Starbucks at the end of the linked article, to insure legality of the promotion anyone can get a free tall coffee today, whether they voted or not).
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Speaking of illegal actions, I was mildly peeved at a lady who came out of voting and walked down the entire line waiting to vote with a No on 1 sign (Question 1 would repeal the state income tax). Now, I support that position, but there's a reason why all the signholders are at least 100 feet from the polling place entrance lady.
quote:Originally posted by Christine: So I voted two weeks ago, which meant I did not get my "I voted" sticker.
Today at my mom's group, I found out that local businesses are offering freebies to votres -- Free coffee from Starbuck's, free sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, free ice cream from Ben and Jerry's,e tc. That's not fair! I voted. I just don't have my sticker.
I'm hearing that Starbucks is offering free cups of coffee to voters.
There is a starbucks a few blocks from my apartment at Namaste Republiki (I can't spell in Czech)... I wonder if they'd give me a free cup.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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At my polling station I was the 311th voter two hours after the polls opened. 500 ballots wouldn't cut it by far.
I think that might just be a terminology thing.
quote: Canada is divided into 308 separate federal ridings or electoral districts. Each district elects one member of Parliament as a representative.
The districts are divided into polling divisions, or “polls.” Stationary polling sites usually contain several polls.
Each district has a number of polling stations. For the June 2004 election there were more than 18,000 polling locations in Canada, and 59,000 individual polls. Elections Canada ensures that nobody is forced to travel more than 30 kilometres to vote.
Mobile polling stations collect the votes of elderly or disabled persons living in health-care institutions. These stations are set up in districts having two or more health care institutions and travel between them to collect ballots.
posted
We had nearly two dozen voting stands at our polling place, in Troy, Michigan. Actually, they set up four more cardboard dividers on round tables with chairs, so I got to sit down while I filled out my ballot. We use basically a black magic marker to fill in an oval by the selected name on the cardboard ballot. Then all the ballots are fed into one optical scanner. It is fast and cheap, and has worked well for us for the six years or so we have been using it. A technician stands right there watching the readout to make sure each ballot was fed in and processed properly. The ballots remain stacked inside the machine, until emptied. So there is a paper trail.
Two precincts share our polling place, and the line for our precinct was much shorter. It was hard not to gloat while we passed by the long line for the other precinct.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I heard a woman on Rush Limbaugh advocating that Republicans say they voted for Obama in the exit polls, to fool later voters into staying home. He said he had fantasized about the same thing.
I guess that is the sort of attitude that irks me about the quality of political discourse in the USA of late. My Beloved and I walked to our polling place a bit ago (no line, middle of the day) and voted for different candidates in some races. Earlier this week, we both had people "playfully" suggest ways in which we could keep the other from voting.
Excuse me for pointing this out, but that's not the way we should be acting. Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn't make them misguided, or stupid, or dangerous. If we all agreed with each other, we wouldn't be people, much less Americans.
I, for one, am moved by the sheer involvement of people in this process. Whoever wins, I will be proud to be an American tomorrow, because of the things I have seen today.
posted
Oh, dude, I wasn't thinking of you. I know my poor mother-in-law wanted him to show me bullet point lists on Neil Boortz and stuff. She's convinced that the only way Obama could win is by voter fraud, because of the ACORN nonsense.
It reminds me of one of my earliest political memories. 1976, my mom was on the phone. I was sitting on the floor playing with my dolls. She was telling someone that if Jimmy Carter was elected, the world would come to an end. Jesus would call the faithful home and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse would ride across the land. She was laughing, talking to her democrat mother, IIRC, but I was very small and not great at reading body language or expressions, and it kind of scared me.
Apparently, we survived. *shrug*
It's not the last five... endings? of Lord of the Rings, good versus evil. It's an election. That's all I'm saying.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Wow, oil is up $7 to $70 a barrel, the Canadian dollar is up 2 cents to 87 cents (it fell to a low of 77 cents a couple weeks ago), and both the Canadian and US stock market are up roughly 4%.
Yay for elections I guess.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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