chewybrian 

Can we talk about the voting process, your method for voting and such without injecting ANY politics into the discussion? Just facts or questions please, and the thread may survive more than a few minutes... Tell us where you are voting, what issues you are voting on (without picking a side!), how you will vote (process, not candidates!) and if the process has changed for you this year.

chewybrian 

I am in Florida, and I am voting by mail this year for the first time. The process is easy enough, but I can see some ways it could go wrong for some people. For one, the return letter requires two stamps. Could they not have made it smaller or given it an exemption such that it would only need one first class stamp? Surely some votes will not count because some people did not realize they needed two stamps. Also, their directions on how to fill in the bubbles if you make a mistake are less than clear.

I am voting on the POTUS election and our proposed constitutional amendments, the homestead exemption and school levies and sheriff. I plan not to vote on the judges running for 'office' as I don't know their positions on anything and don't plan to take the time to research them, even if I could find the facts. Do you vote on issues you don't understand, or leave some blank, or do you fully understand every issue?

skijor

By mail, first time for that for me. Delivered the ballot by hand to the drop box at City Hall. The return envelope included a stamp. Yours must have been heavy enough to warrant two stamps. There wasn't anything extra like referendums this time. Just a handful of offices. And yes, POTUS was the #1 reason. Then again, I would've voted regardless of this round's differences. My in-person voting location also changed. I wanted to avoid any bs complications going to a new site.

genec

Process has not changed. Currently, I live in a long time mail in ballot state. (the act of mailing in ballots has long been done here). I voted primary elections back in August by walking to the metal ballot box in the local church parking lot and dropping off my ballot.

BTW, If I chose to mail in the ballot, it would require no stamps... it is postmark paid. I like the act of "going to vote" based on what I have always done... so I take my ballot right to the official metal box and drop it off.

Yesterday, I heard from neighbors that there were armed guards in the church parking lot... interesting. The sheriff office responded that they were going to check it out. ("police blotter").

For the last several elections, I lived in a different state, which had absentee ballots available, but I voted in person... I rode my bike several blocks to a local elementary school to vote... locking my bike to the school fence, going inside, showing my election handbook to the polling person and then signing the poll book. I never showed ID... just the ballot book with my name on the mailing address was enough.

jack pot 

i rode my bicycle to the county courthouse and personally delivered my "mail in" ballot to the clerks office ... i wore 2 masks & rubber gloves ..... outside of the courthouse many GOP poll workers had no masks .... most Dem poll workers were black and all GOP were white .......................... these are apolitical observations

Seattle Forrest

I'm voting by mail, as always. My ballot arrived last week, I will drop it off in person at a ballot drop I know is legitimate, and is on a bike loop I enjoy.

My #1 priority is the environment, and I think more and more people are seeing this as a critical issue. That's a large umbrella, to me it means coinage change and wildland preservation primarily.

AlmostTrick

I always vote in person, and this will be only my second time voting early. (probably tonight, the first day open here) It will be my first time ever voting a straight ticket because I feel a message must be sent, and one party needs to be completely destroyed for its actions/inactions. (notice, I didn't say which one! )

skijor

Masks X2 & rubber gloves ok. But what about pants? no motor and ahsposo are the go-to No-Pants Party candidates this year and every year.

Hondo Gravel

I’m going to early vote sometime this week at a building by the tax office.

wgscott

I grew up in Chicago. Every day I cast my vote prior to 9:30 am.

Hondo Gravel

Oh yeah and I will be wearing my Led Zeppelin t-shirt with my KISS mask on and my Iron Maiden cap.

ahsposo 

I'm in Jawja and I stood in line for about an hour on the third day of early voting. I wanted to vote in person for a couple of reasons; we have new machines that produce a redundant paper ballot and I wanted to get a feel for it's trustworthiness and accountability. I'd say it was an improvement over the old system that I had no faith in. My second reason is I had a fear of somehow screwing up my mail-in ballot and having it disqualified. Did not want that.

jack pot 

..........Nixon or Kennedy ?

wgscott

I'm not that olde.

no motor?

Vote early, vote often as they say in Chicago. I've always voted in person on election day before, but this year voted early using what used to be called an absentee ballot. And I socially distanced my vote by having my GF drop it off at the official collection spot instead of mailing it.
I was able to walk a couple of blocks to vote in person before I moved a town over, and I'd have to drive a half hour to an hour to vote now due to recent changes in polling places so I probably would have voted this way even without the Covid19 worries.

no motor?

My GF was an election judge for 5 years, and felt strongly that it was a civic duty she should perform. When I asked her about doing it this year she said there was no way she'd take the risk of being exposed to the virus.

Altair 4

Mrs. Altair and I voted in the Spring primary by mail. We had the option of selecting whether we'd like to continue to receive mail-in ballots. Since Mrs. Altair is immuno-suppressed, we answered in the affirmative. Our general election ballots were mailed out at the end of September. We decided to drop off our ballots at our County office over this past weekend. It was a "no fuss, no muss" operation. This morning, I confirmed, via a state website, that our ballots have been received (I could track each date - when requested, when mailed, when received), . If we had chosen to mail in our ballots, the mailing envelop was already marked "postal paid" so there would be no confusion on the proper amount of postage. Given the security measures in place, I feel confident that our ballots were properly handled from start to finish. Young Altair, voting in her first election, will be doing likewise.

In the past, our local voting station was never very busy. I don't think I've waited for more than two people to finish before I could vote in the past 30 years. However, due to COVID, several stations are being consolidated for this election. I have no idea what the wait time would be (which you can interpret as "exposure time") so we are happy with this approach.

indyfabz

Received my PA mail-in ballot on Saturday. Going to drop it off at the election committee headquarters this week. There’s actually a drop box not far from my house, but I’m not going to risk vandalism.

RubeRad

I voted by mail this year, as I have done for the past 10 years or so. Normally I cram on all the ballot issues/candidates (some local/nonpartisan candidates are chosen on the flimsiest of reasons since their short bios don't say much) the night before, and drop my mail ballot off at a polling place that is along my bike commute.

This year I did stuff earlier, put a little more effort into researching the statewide propositions. I put a vote for every issue/candidate on my ballot, as ysual a number of the more rinky-dink local candidate votes are rather arbitrary.

I rode my bike to the local library on Sat to use an official ballot dropbox, but when I got there the library was closed with a sign said 'hours for the ballot dropbox: M-F 10-4'. Weekend hours only the weekend before the election. So I rode on to the post office and dropped my ballot in the outgoing mail slot in the building ('safer' I guess than the blue mailboxes standing out in the drive for car access)

I'll be checking online to track the progress of my ballot. I guess it might take a day or two to reach the first traceability point.

RubeRad

Interesting. HBO's documentary Kill Chain (full version on utub below) talked a good bit about Georgia's switch from the AccuVote TSX to a newer type of machine I don't remember the name, and they criticized it because its paper ballot is not human-readable, but a QR code, which they say is a problem because QR are not human-readable, so you can't really be sure what it says, and/or whether the machine actually recorded/submitted what's in the QR even if you could read it.

So what was your experience of the new system?

Mad Honk 

I voted here in IN this morning. Line was one and a half blocks long when I got there, but went to two blocks long in fifteen minutes. Total time was one hour and fifteen minutes. We use a verification system for the poll workers to print the ballot on demand for the voter's precinct. Our ballots are all paper and kept for recounts etc.. The verification papers of voters are kept separate indicating when and where they voted. Our ballot are scanned electronically and all poll workers are notarized so all ballots are secured when done. I normally would vote in person but covid problems have forced me to do something different. I'm glad I have this behind me. Smiles, MH

jon c. 

These days I look up every issue and office. I didn't always but I now believe it is important.

I voted "by mail" in the primary, although I dropped off the ballot at the Supervisor of Elections office. Which for me happens to be closer than the nearest Post Office anyway. I planned to do the same in the general election, but it's been very humid here. The mail in ballot was sitting in a pile of mail and the return envelope glued itself shut. I was able to open it, but that took some effort. When I put in the ballot in and tried to reseal it, it ended up looking like someone had pried it open. I decided it wasn't a good idea to submit a ballot that appeared to have been tampered with so I'm going to opt for early voting instead.

FiftySix

I voted in person this past Friday. It was raining and there were more voting machines than people voting*. It was the first time I can remember in my 3-1/2 decades of voting that I was essentially first in line without having to wait in a line.

I was glad to see that straight party voting wasn't an option this time around.




*My county has a very nice website showing the wait times at all the voting locations. That made it easy to pick a place to vote with a short wait time.

RubeRad

Good idea. Don't take any chances, do what you can to make sure your vote is counted properly, and without adding any reasons for anybody else to question the process or legitimacy of the whole thing.

3alarmer

...did you vote for Coolidge again ? I still have my Herbert Hoover campaign button, but even though I write his name in every year, he never wins.