Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Voter Diary

Just back from voting.  At 11am I was number 526 to vote. In 2006, I was number 178 at 4 pm. 2004, around 425 at that same time. This is shaping up to be a VERY high turnout.

All going smoothly in my precinct except for the common error of dividing the alphabet evenly at j/k and expecting even length lines.  From the personal experience of years of convention registration work I can tell you  that American names are weighted very heavily to the first quarter of the alphabet. Dividing registration at E or even D will get you equal length lines in most groups. As a result, the a-j line had 50 people in it while I, being R surnamed, was behind 3 when I entered the building and voted quickly.

Another pleasant surprise, my county has completed the change back to paper scan ballots since last fall. No more Dieboltian vote swallowers here.

No McCain workers outside the polling place. 4 Obama workers and a lone sad looking supporter for the local Congressional candidate.

GO OBAMA!

Update: Reports on local radio say that over 1000 Penn State students were in line before polls opened at one of the downtown State College precincts. Go Lions!

1 comment:

robin andrea said...

Hey thanks for stopping by the Dharma Bums and commenting. We appreciated hearing from you. It has definitely been a while.

We voted early and missed out on all the excitement. Still, we are going to be very happy at the end of this very long day.

GO OBAMA!