Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Voting Made Easy (?)

I have a short backlog of entries to make, but I thought I'd write a timely one while it's fresh in my mind, especially since I don't have pictures to remember it by.

Today was (is) Super Tuesday, and Georgia is one of many states hosting presidential primary voting today. After 2 and a half years as an Athens resident, I figured it was about time for me to actually register to vote, so back in January, I did just that. If you have a Georgia driver's license, you can register online pretty quickly and easily, and I got my voter's card in the mail a few weeks ago.

My polling place is a short walk from my house, so the overall time it took me to walk there, vote, and walk home was about 25 minutes. I was afraid I might catch some flack for my driver's license address not being up to date, so I brought the voter's card along too, but it didn't seem to be a problem. Cell phones were not permitted in the voting area, so I couldn't get any pictures of the voting process.

I used an electronic voting setup (ExpressPoll maybe?), consisting of a touch-screen monitor and a card reader. The process was so quick and easy, I thought that there was no way anyone could screw it up. Seriously, you slide this plastic card with a chip into the reader until it clicks (as per directions on the reader itself), then you read a screen with directions, mark your vote on the next page, click "Cast Your Ballot", and it slides your card back out. Done, 10 seconds, maybe a minute if you're still deciding between candidates.

But sure enough, no sooner had I had turned in my card, gotten a sticker, and walked out the door, when one of the polling volunteers ran out and said I had forgotten to click "Cast Your Ballot" and that I needed to come back and finish voting. I said that I had clicked it, walked in, and saw that someone at a different machine had not actually finished before walking out. (The "Cast Your Ballot Screen" was showing in huge letters, with the chip still sitting in the reader.) The volunteer ran out and found the guilty party, who was completely clueless that they had not correctly completed the process, and all was well.

Seriously? Seriously.