A Florida Voting Report

From Patricia:

I voted in the middle of the day, when lines were short at my polling location, in the assembly room of a neighborhood Catholic church. At the beginning of the sidewalk to the polling place, I was met by a woman who asked me if I wanted to participate in an exit poll. Being the suspicious person that I am, I declined, noting that she was sitting close to people with Obama and Clinton campaign signs. Not accepting my decline, she asked again, telling me in a serious tone that my participation would allow them to assure that the voting machines were working correctly. I laughed, and declined again and continued walking toward the polling place passing by the exit-poll table set up in the shade of the building, manned by three or four nicely dressed men. I was met just outside the door to the polling place by an official in a vest who asked to see my voter registration card, which I showed him. After looking at the card, he directed me to the table right inside the door.

Once inside, I could see that other tables were set up for other precincts voting at this location. I went to my precinct table right inside the door as directed and found about five people in the line in front of me. The table was set up with signs designating alphabetical groupings and women in chairs on the other side of the table to look up voter names in printouts of registered voters matching the alphabetical groupings. Apparently, all the people in front of me had last names in the same alphabetical grouping as mine. There were no people in front of the other alphabetical groupings. And they were all problem voters. None of them had voter registration cards, or knew what precinct they were from, but nevertheless ended up at my precinct table. One by one their names were looked up in the one copy of S-Z and not found. After a few irrelevant questions from the women behind the tables: Are you married? Did your husband vote here? Did you move? Are you sure you are registered? These generally provoked irritated responses from them. After wasting time thusly, they were then sent to another table where a man with a computer would help them.

I finally got to the front of the line, but since the S-Z printout was in use, I had to wait a bit longer for my name to be found in it. Finally, my name was found in the S-Z printout. I signed on the appropriate line in the printout and, after the woman behind the desk scrutinized my sloppy signature for a match with my registration card, she gave me my ballot and sent me to the voting booths. Immediately available for my use were at least ten booths. Since the process of signing in created such a delay, getting a ballot and the amount of time to vote was short, due to only a couple of items on the ballot, and no lines had formed to use them. The bottleneck was clearly the sign-in process, not the number of machines.

Voting took me only a few seconds on the new touch-screen voting machine. I returned my ballot and received my "I Voted" stamp. Pleased with myself for exercising my voting rights in this wonderful democracy, wadding up my stamp, I walked past the exit-poll table where several poor schmucks who had agreed to take the exit poll were filling out paperwork, surrounded by three or four men ready to answer questions, or ask them, I really don't know.

Ah, democracy, how confusing for those who don't know what precinct they live in, or bother to change their address on their voter registration, or read their mail when they get their card, or believe campaign workers who assure them that voting machines are working correctly.

Remember, this is from the heart of "hanging chad country."