OFF TO VOTE

Listen, I'm Old School about this.

It's not that I've procrastinated.

I just hate this early voting thing (as I believe I've mentioned.) Election Day should be a day.

A single Great Civic Ritual.

Now, I'll admit that while I believe bitching about standing in line should bring us together as citizens and be a part of the Great Civic Ritual, it is also the case that since I've lived in North Carolina I've never had to wait more than about fifteen minutes (and turn out is generally pretty high in this politically involved college town.)

Ironically, the only time I had to wait in line was the 2000 cycle, when I got all excited about this new fangled "No Excuse Voting" and decided to give early voting a whirl.

You know what happened? The volunteers at the special polling places for early voting had no idea what they were doing and it was a disaster.

Now, I keep hearing horror stories about the lines this time out (and I've seen the lines at the early polling place on campus) but I'm going to chalk it up to that, and put my faith in the good people at Binkley Baptist Church who've never let me down so far.

And I'm going to go vote on Election Day, thank you very much.

Update: Voting in Chapel Hill: I got there by 10:45, so I missed the on-the-way-to-work crowd, and beat the lunch rush. They couldn't have this thing better organized if they had a stop watch on it -- just as the person ahead of you finishes, you walk up. I mean, it was clockwork, baby. (Proving my theory about the people running the early voting polling places around here.) I'm proud to say, according to the optical scan reader, I was voter number 380.

By the way, I offered ID to the election worker checking me in, and he said it wasn't necessary. I asked if that didn't seem just a touch bothersome to him. He surprised me by agreeing, admitting that it seemed to him a miminal requirement that you ought to be able to prove you were who you said you were -- but it's state law that election workers cannot ask people showing up to vote for identification.

I'm sorry, but it just seems to me that if everyone is asked for identification then first, it ain't voter supression, much less racism, and second, you'd certainly be more likely to stave off fraud. But making it illegal to ask under any circumstances? That's just nuts.

Comments

[poll troll]

Best Poll for undecided Voters;

Since 1956, Weekly Reader students in grades 1-12 have correctly picked the president

http://www.weeklyreader.com/election_vote.asp

Weekly Reader kids select Bush in Presidential Poll

The students who read Weekly Reader’s magazines have made their preference for President known: they want to send President Bush back to the White House.

The results of this year’s Weekly Reader poll have just been announced, and the winner is President Bush. Hundreds of thousands of students participated, giving the Republican President more than 60% of the votes cast and making him a decisive choice over Democratic Senator John Kerry.

Since 1956, Weekly Reader students in grades 1-12 have correctly picked the president, making the Weekly Reader poll one of the most accurate predictors of presidential outcomes in history.

[caltechgirl]

I thought it was funny about the ID thing when we went to vote for the primaries this summer. I offered my ID to the man at the desk, and he told me to put it away, because he didn't even want anyone to think he had asked me for it.

Good that you didn't have to wait though, we stood in line at Morehead for 2 hours on Saturday. They told us they had already had over 14,000 voters, so it doesn't surprise me that things went smoothly so far today.

[Kenneth Waight]

I've been a pollworker in Cary for several years and the ID issue often comes up. My own view is that our system in NC is a reasonable balance between trying to make it relatively easy to vote and trying to make it relatively hard to vote fraudulently. I'm certain that it would be very hard to commit systematic LBJ/South Texas-style fraud here, but easy to do it on a very small scale, just walk in and claim to be someone else you know is on the rolls but won't be voting. I doubt that kind of thing happens often, because what would be the incentive to take a big risk (felony) for such a small gain?

Here's an analogy -- it's like a gas station trying to decide whether to force people to pay before pumping gas. By forcing pre-payment, you can reduce theft but maybe at the expense of losing good customers. In an area where drive-away gas thefts became a large problem, forcing pre-payment might be justified. I don't see any evidence that there is a problem with voters claiming to be someone they're not, so I don't think there's a need to require ID.

P.S. This was the first election where we did have to ask for ID's or proof of name and address from a few voters, those who didn't have to show ID when they registered to vote (e.g. a registration drive instead of at the DMV).