Our precinct had new machines. Though this seemed to be working correctly, perhaps yours was not. Problems do happen with electronic vote counting.First, the voting machine was breaking down. Which was a first for me in this precinct since we went to this kind of counting in the Joan Growe years.
This is the job of the one of the judges, yes. Hand out the ballot, describe what to do, collect and number the receipts. The judges switch positions throughout the day.Second, they had one elderly lady handing out the ballots, explaining how the senatorial vote was to be handled,AND writing sequential numbers on the receipts. She was complaining that she couldn't keep up with the writing and she tried to do several while I stood there waiting for my ballot.
She seemed to feel she had to put them on a spike as she wrote the numbers on them.
She is required to.
She tried to push several at once on the spike, but she hadn't the hand strength to do it.
She tried to get caught up, and should have done them one by one.
That's not her own invented procedure. The receipts are numbered so that the used receipts can be tallied against the number of ballots counted. This procedure helps detect if ballots were counted that were not cast by registered voters (since the receipt is given to those on the voter rolls when they sign in, or register).Then she found a numbered receipt that hadn't been put on where it belonged in the numerical order. I can't tell if this was her own invented procedure, but it certainly was a bottle neck in the whole thing.
Plus, the had about a half dozen people younger and stronger than she was.
She'll be rotated to a different job as the day goes on.
I didn't notice any thing new except the new grey ballot counters. The old ones were blue.This whole voting procedure was full of novelties with no advance notice.
Voters have been required to pick up a receipt when they sign in and to then turn in the receipt when they collect their ballot in Minneapolis for many many years now. This is not a new procedure.As a result, newcomers came in and stood in the long line for a while before someone told them they had to have a receipt.
There are procedures for aiding handicapped voters, including procedures to allow voting by voters who cannot walk or leave the car that brought them to the polls. I am sorry he didn't ask for a chair, and that one was not offered to him.Most got disgruntled but went ahead and voted anyway. One old guy came in with a cane and said there was no way he could stand that long in a line.
One discouraged vote gone this year. I don't know how many went away mmediately on seeing the line. One could criticize their attitude, but the thing to remember is that in the Cooper neighborhood, we don't HAVE this kind of experience with voting. Prior to this year, we had admirable efficiency. The problem had to be an imposed one because the same judges do it every time. Wellstone's death made a problem, but it didn't cause all this.
I saw nothing unusual or new in any procedure at my polling place.
I am speaking from experience in my remarks above. For years I was an election judge at Painter Park (then 10-5; it's something else now). The gubernatorial race where Arnie Carlson replaced Jon Grunseth at the last minute was a nightmare. We hand counted ballots that year, but we also machine counted, and the voting machines had some problem where static electricity built up and caused the computer in the machine to loses its memory. We re-counted, the memory would zero, we recounted, the memory would zero, on and on into the night. Around 4 am, we took the ballots to City Hall where another judge and I (one from each party) fed them into machine on a rubber mat which had been sprayed with Static Guard. Our precinct had an accurate vote count, but it took us 24 hours to produce it. I have a Commendation from Mayor Sayles-Belton for my work that night. I am quite proud of it.A number of ballots in this precinct did NOT get electronically counted. People had waited 45 minutes to make the critical step, and then the machine wouldnt work (can you say "Florida"?) I swore that once I marked my ballot, I'd wait all day to get it machine-counted. I'm not that old yet, and I arranged a day off for the election because I kinda smelled trouble coming. I didn't want to worry about getting to work in this kind of year.
Minnesota leads the nation in accurate fair elections. The ballots will be counted by a working tally machine. One way or another.
From what you've reported, it doesn't sound like it to me. It sounds like a high voter turnout combined with an elderly, slow-moving judge. Perhaps you can consider working an election yourself some day; it's quite an interesting experience.I genuinely believe there WILL be some lawsuits on this election day. I hope so. I think there is fishy stuff going on.
A note to those who are reporting their precinct turnouts: the ballot counting machine I inserted my two pages of ballot into counted *each page as a separate voter*. If you are reporting turnouts based on the number presented on the voting machine, it seems to me you have to divide that number by 2.
Karen Cooper, wearing an "I voted" sticker in Tangletown
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