election

[cellio]

The polls were practically deserted when I went this morning on my way to work. There weren't even any campaigners out front -- just one guy from the Sierra Club with a petition. Weird. (My district -- or maybe my state, for all I know -- doesn't tell you what voter number you are for the day, like I've heard some places do. So we'll have to wait for the news reports to find out about turnout.) For better or worse, I've now done my small part to nudge the election in the direction I prefer. We'll see if it did any good later.

Over the weekend we got automated phone spam from Hillary and three of her supporters, all of it devoid of positive content. Yuck. We also got phone spam from the Obama campaign -- one succinct, positive message with a URL, either from an actual human or using much better recording technology than the Hillary campaign. So that's minus 4 points for Hillary and minus 0.5 points for Obama, more or less. (No, this didn't affect my vote.)

In the last few elections there's always been a bake sale at the polling place, run by kids. (I assume it's a fundraiser for their school. Now that I wrote this, though: are schools not in session today, or were these kids missing classes?) I try to support fundraisers where the kids themselves are doing the work (as opposed to when parents shill for their kids); I think it teaches good values. But I didn't expect this to work today. When they asked if I wanted any cookies I said "got anything that's kosher for Passover?", and they actually did! They had macaroons that they'd arranged to make in a kosher l'pesach kitchen. Cool. So I bought some. They are far from the best macaroons I've had, but they're ok and really, the cookies were secondary anyway. I strive to support with my dollars -- and my votes -- the behaviors I want to encourage, and withhold both in response to behaviors I find objectionable.

Comments

[geekosaur]

FWIW I get a little ticket stub proving that I voted, it includes a number for my precinct.

[cellio]

So did I. What we don't get is something like "you are voter #613 in this precinct today", which friends in Boston report getting up there. The number doesn't really mean anything, but it would be kind of neat. Oh well.

[geekosaur]

Actually, the one I got at the general last year did get a sequential number written on it. This time though, no.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I don't get that, actually. What I do get is to look at the machine that's accepting my paper ballot(s) which shows how many papers it's 'eaten' today, and from that I can figure out my (likely) number. (When there are two ballots and an odd number comes up for the second one, I'm less certain I'm correct, but really, it's all about ballparking and comparison.)

[cellio]

Oh, whoops. I misunderstood. (We now have the electronic machines, so no useful feedback at all. I mean, I'm taking it on faith that my vote was received...)

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

School vacation up here, don't know about P-burgh. Good for them for making the effort to have something you could eat.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

My polling place was getting crowded at around 9:30. Fortunately, the crowd came in as I was finishing. At least two of the three machines were in use the entire time I was there. I haven't been around here enough to know if that's standard for this location or not.

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

I was voter #1 at my ward (there was a line for the other ward when I arrived just before 7am).

I've been lucky and not gotten any spam calls (they're all for Kathy :).

[cellio]

I should have known that you would open the place up. :-)

Our spam calls haven't asked for specific people -- they just launch right in. Maybe it's different if you're home; these all came while we were away for Pesach, so the machine got 'em.

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

The live person messages have all asked specifically for Kathy.

The spam ones are for Kathy because they're from either Clinton or Obama (I'm registered Republican so they couldn't be for me :)

voter number

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

While I didn't get a written number, I was voter 258 at around 10am in our tiny polling place (in the back of the garage where they keep the township's snow plow). I just asked when I signed in.