<p>Here, you just tell the local person behind the table your name and they check your name off a paper list. No ID or anything. The booth has no curtain. The ballot is a piece of paper that you fill in the circles like on the SATs. I live in Vermont.</p>
<p>^^^ same as soozievt. No ID checks, they find your name on a list and you sign. There is a signature there for comparison; I don’t think they are comparing, though. </p>
<p>Last time, a friend told me that the poll workers gave her the evil eye but stopped short of asking for ID. I hadn’t realized it until then, but she has a very WASPY name although she is visibly Puerto Rican. The last name is her husband’s, and she has a non-Hispanic-sounding first name.</p>
<p>I was just reminiscing last night with D2 about taking her into the voting booth when she was little, and letting her flip a few of the keys for me on the old mechanical voting machines. I told her I hate the bubble sheets we now use (even though I know it’s a more reliable technology). When I was a kid they used to give us such stern warnings before standardized tests about how our answers wouldn’t be recorded if we didn’t fill in the bubble completely, or would be recorded as wrong answers if we left any stray marks, that I had nightmares about screwing up my bubble sheets. So voting brings back bad memories.</p>
<p>D2 said that after the PSAT, PLAM, SAT I, ACT, and SAT Subject Tests she’s really good at bubble sheets. I told her I’m glad she learned a useful skill out of all that. She’ll be a competent voter once she hits 18.</p>
<p>bclintonk – so true – there is great emphasis on the “bubbling in” skill in school these days!</p>
<p>Here in MN, we bubbled, then fed the ballot into a machine to count it. I registered late, so had to fill out another form when I got to my polling place, but I don’t think you have to have an ID here to vote if you are registered. However, that could change. It was one of the things on the ballot here today.</p>
<p>I was in France when Pompidou died (1974). They gave you two pieces of paper one with each candidates name and you put one or the other, or I suppose if you wanted to, both names in a box. It seemed very primitive!</p>
<p>Sorry for my confusion on the hanging and pregnant chads and the type of voting method that created them. The mind has a way of blocking out what is too painful to remember. :o The lack of a clear winner the morning after an election is miserable for the entire nation, regardless of who you support.</p>
<p>Same as soozievt in NY, too. And I also have fear of not filling in bubble properly. </p>
<p>With voter participation in this country pathetically low, I find it laughable that anyone would think there are scores of people running around trying to impersonate another to vote.</p>
<p>In Cook County Illinois, the touchscreens all have paper ballot backup. You vote on the touch screen, and then confirm your votes both on a summary screen and printed ballot on a role of paper. That way there is a paper record in case there is any question. I like the touchscreens - they alert you if you missed a race (undervote) and will allow you to correct it. They also won’t allow you to overvote a race and spoil your ballot.</p>
<p>However, my understanding is that when touchscreens were first implemented, not all machines had the paper backup. I believe in order to be fully compliant with the Help America Vote Act (passed after the 2000 disaster) non-scantron methods need a backup to minimize problems.</p>
<p>Consolation: we must be in different parts of Connecticut. My polling place in suburban New Haven has had the “SAT form” for a couple of years now.</p>
<p>Love the kid playing “voting” behind the curtains! Did he become a polisci major?</p>
<p>I wish I had been able to vote on an old voting machine! I have lots of memories of going to the polls with my parents and seeing that my two next door neighbors were election judges. Illinois got rid of the voting machines in the late 70’s and adopted the infamous punchcard system - my first election was 1980.</p>
<p>No voting machines in my town. No ID–just give your name and address to the poll worker. Paper ballot–take it to a booth with no curtain. Have to ink in your choices and as you leave, you check out with another poll worker and go over and insert the ballot into a machine that reads the votes (I assume that’s what it does.) Small town in central Massachusetts. I knew most of the people working at the polls. The town’s Democrat and Republic party organizations send folks to work at the polls. There’s an equal number of workers from each party.</p>
<p>Had levers and punch ballots. Don’t miss them. Love the electronic ones used this time.</p>
<p>Don’t think I ever voted with one of the old fashioned machines, but did with the punch ballot.</p>
<p>I remember growing up in a small town and my parents voting place was a neighbor’s garage. They set up the voting booths in there.</p>
<p>I said in an earlier post that there was a drape around the machines where I voted, but apparently I remembered wrong. No drape but the machines were spread far enough apart that there was a big feeling of privacy.</p>
<p>I never used the lever-type machines, but I remember my parents using them. We used to have punch cards in our local polling place, but I’m not sure what they use now. We’ve early voted the last several elections and have used touch screens. Our touch screen machines have a cash register type tape behind a window that you can verify before you commit to a final vote. That’s its paper trail.</p>
<p>My district in CA actually has a nice system. It uses the SAT style ballots, but there’s a contraption you load your ballot into. It’s like your putting it into the back of a book. Open the first page and there’s a few holes along the spine along with a replica of the voters handbook (info on candidates/races) for the pages. You take a little stamp thing they provide, and while it feels like you’re punching a hole in the ballot, you’re actually marking your ballot with ink. Turn the page and get the next set of races/propositions to vote on. No worries about over/underfilling a bubble, I can’t imagine how you’d vote twice in the same race, and it leaves a paper trail. When you finish and go to leave you actually pass it through the scanning machine yourself.</p>
<p>I’ve actually signed up for the permanent vote by mail system. It’s even better. Get the ballot a month or so in advance and spend as much time as I want researching and doing my voting.</p>
<p>I was disappointed when a bunch of my friends said they were just going to vote No on all of the Propositions because they’re generally all dumb. They’re obviously not alone, since 28.5% of people voted against Proposition 40. The rebuttal’s argument was, “Vote Yes, we’ve withdrawn our objections.” How can you then go to vote no! (Especially since even if No won, nothing would have happened!)</p>
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<p>However, such voting machines should also print out a paper ballot that can be inspected by the voter and later hand or machine counted in case a recount is needed, or there is suspicion of problems with the voting machines.</p>
<p>Where I vote in FLA they still use paper ballots. No hanging chads anymore, it’s fill in the circle next to your choice. Just like the SAT’s. Meh…Florida.</p>
<p>Florida’s 67 counties are required by state to use paper optical scanning voting systems and also to have touch screen voting machines with audio available for blind voters. Absentee votes are still being counted in Florida…Florida still doesn’t know which presidential candidate had most votes in Florida.</p>
<p>Touchscreens: In Chicago you have a choice of touchscreen or paper ballot. You feed your paper ballot into a ballot scanner and it reads your choices electronically, just like the you can do yourself on the touchscreen. Either way, your vote is on a cartridge and at the end of the day, the consolidated results from the ballot scanner and the touchscreen machine/machines are transmitted electronically to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. The paper back up records from the ballot scanner, the touchscreen machine and the card activator (and all the paper ballots, and all the applications to vote, and all the unused applications to vote, etc) are hauled to the Receiving Station by the Judges of Election, your neighbors that have been up since 3am.</p>
<p>Just like always, you do not receive a print out of your vote. The constition calls for a secret ballot, remember? Only you know who you voted for and it is secret. Tell whoever you want, but no one (spouse, employer, precinct captain, etc) can demand proof of who you voted for.</p>