Vote, Vote, Vote

~ Laura

I'm running around town trying to get all the chores accomplished. run. check. vote. check. write. check. food shop. no check.  Well, the kids can eat the Halloween candy for dinner.

I need to get all this done, so I can plop myself down on the sofa tonight and watch the returns come in. I'll be on twitter and the blog all night.

Please change your RSS feeds and bookmarks for Apt. 11d. This is the best url — http://www.apt11d.com and this is the best RSS feed — http://www.apt11d.com/atom.xml

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Question of the Day: What was the scene at your polling station? Big turnout?

Quick link: Susan Orlean talks about voting in upstate New York. "Now, as far as I can tell, the biggest fall crop in Columbia County is political lawn signage, flourishing on road shoulders and medians and right-of-ways as well as front lawns."

Published by Laura

15 thoughts on “Vote, Vote, Vote”

  1. I was #14 at my polling place at 9:30 this morning, with about 20 poll workers/ watchers and no other voters. This may be an “important” election, but there isn’t any important stuff happening down here in NJ-1. When Rob Andrews wins with 66% of the vote instead of 65%, you can thank me.

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  2. I voted around 1:30 PM today near campus. It’s raining like crazy. There were 6 voters there (including me) and nearly that many election workers.
    This time around, I know that the Texas railroad commissioner “has primary regulatory jurisdiction over oil and natural gas industry, pipeline transporters, natural gas & hazardous liquid pipeline industry, natural gas utilities, the LP-gas industry, and coal & uranium surface mining operations.”
    http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/
    Maybe it’s time to change the job title?
    During the run-up to the election there was a lot of political advertising on talk radio. I noticed that party affiliation doesn’t get mentioned almost at all by either party in radio ads, and the same is true of yard signs.

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  3. I voted at noon. 1400+ people had voted already. There was, for the first time since I’ve voted here, a line.
    MA has a proposition to lower sales taxes by about half. In my opinion, only a moron would vote for this, so I’m sure it will pass.

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  4. I voted at noon. 1400+ people had voted already.
    Your polling places must cover a great deal of ground. The paper just had an article about turn-out and it noted, in passing, that the polling station closest to my office has 300 registered voters on the entire roll. In my 3 mile commute this morning, I went right by four polling places. (I have not voted yet.)

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  5. We filled out our paper ballots this morning (way late, since we’ve had the ballots for many weeks). Filling out paper is much easier than voting at the polls. I think I managed to return my library books, ’cause I didn’t have to go out to vote. Since our library fines are now $0.20/day, that’s a good thing.

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  6. I voted at lunchtime, and I think I was the only person under 75 in the place, including the poll workers. It wasn’t crowded, though there were still some lines because NYC has recently switched to electronic voting, and they’ve managed to integrate the worst features of several systems into the new one.

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  7. Voted this morning at at church near our house. The lines were so long that we chose the paper ballots. We were out of there in ten minutes, after waiting for our youngest to use the bathroom, while the folks who came in just before us were still waiting in line.

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  8. I voted just now. There was only one person ahead of me and the poll worker took me first, probably because I had an irked preschooler or because she was racist and I was the white guy. Sitting on the check-in desk in plain sight of that lady was a Dem slate card. There was a hand-drawn “tea party” type sign outside, but the people handing out the Dem slate cards were standing in front of it. On the way out somebody offered my son a lolly, which I graciously declined because we are to the rafters with sugar.

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  9. six people ahead of me. in and out in under ten minutes. This is Arlington, Va, known to the Reeps in the legislature as ‘Peoples’ Arlington’, no races were in doubt, no suspense.

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  10. I voted at about 7 am in Manhattan. It wasn’t crowded, probably about average for a midterm election, as best I can recall. No election in which I voted is competitive, to my knowledge–the Republicans don’t even field candidates for some positions–so the lack of excitement is understandable.

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  11. Rural Illinois, at noon. More election workers than voters (maybe 5 or so) but a steady stream, and it’s a small town. I opted to vote on the one snazzy new electronic machine; there were 5-6 other machines where you could vote on a paper ballot.
    I love my polling place – it’s a warehouse stuck back on a small dead end street, and there’s a big hand-lettered VOTE sign so that you don’t think you’re lost when you get to the dead end. Last time there was a little American flag taped to the utility box outside the door. Maybe that only comes out for the presidential elections.

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  12. We voted at 7:45am, the polls had been open since 6:30, I was the 100th voter and there was a bit of a backup for the voting stations. The poll workers mentioned lower-than-2008 early voting numbers. They also said their busiest time is after 5pm.
    I drove a friend to the polling station at 11:30 and she was #375, again there was a bit of a backlog in the voting area.
    I was at the library at 7:15pm, 15 minutes before the polls closed, and the polling workers out front were trying to figure out whether someone who didn’t have time to get to her own polling station could cast a provisional ballot there. There were lots of people around but I got the feeling that most of them were library patrons.
    According to the county website, 907 people voted in my precinct in 2006, and 82% of them were for the incumbent Democrat.
    Oh, look, the precinct data is completely reported. 937 votes were cast this time around. It looks like the Democrat got 79% of the vote this time around.
    We’re a real battleground. Snort.

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  13. I wonder if Anderson Cooper and the blond Fox lady both picked the commentators to make their hair look even better by comparison.

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  14. Heavy turnout in my very-Republican-for-SWPA suburb. It’s our first time voting in the new ‘hood, and it’s such a pleasant change. Back in the city, we had to deal with union creeps not only electioneering from inside the polling place, but actually physically preventing people from entering until they took a ballot card.
    The lines move much, much faster here, too, which I originally thought suggested that we’re all voting straight ticket, but the ward-level data doesn’t bear that out. I guess it’s just more affluent professional feeling much more at ease with technology?

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  15. I had a look at election results in the local newspaper in Starbucks. All of the featured races went to Republicans. Even Democratic Congressman Chet Edwards (the beloved Chet Edwards) is out on his ear. I can’t tell you how bizarre this is. Two years ago, our front yard was sandwiched between two yards with Chet Edwards yard signs and you used to see his bumper stickers all over. I’m not even sure that it was necessarily even his votes that did him in. He voted against health care reform, but for ARRA.

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