After I got up this morning and checked email I headed over to the voting station for my area. The place where we vote is a community center in oddly enough a community called “Dixie”. I’ll let you insert your own jokes for that one.
I got there a little after 7:30 AM. The people there voting were working people: nurses, professors, construction workers, police, Wal-mart cashiers, and of course a lonely software engineer. Here’s the line when I first arrived.
After about 15 minutes or so of waiting I finally got inside.
I gave my name, and I was given a voter card. Fancy! And who says we don’t have technology in this fine state?
As I was standing in line there were signs taped to the wall which outlined all the rules of voting. If you blow this up by clicking on the picture you can probably read the text.
Fortunately there wasn’t a single person person campaigning outside of the building. It was rather peaceful, the way it should be. I voted one time in Ann Arbor, MI and it was the absolute worst experience of my life. I felt as if I was being hunted and stalked when I walked up to the building. It wouldn’t have been so bad but everything each person was trying to get me to vote for I was 100% against.
I was a little confused by this sign because I was never asked for ID. I did have my voter registration card in hand and I couldn’t tell if the lady actually read my name from it or not.
As you’ll see, we used electronic voting machines. This is the paper version of what the ballot is suppose to look like.
They had voting machines lined up against the walls. The gentleman helping a voter is my next door neighbor, a retired Boy Scout leader.
Finally it is my turn. Here is the voting machine. It is made by Diebold. The way it worked is you slid the voter card into the slot up top. Then the screen came on giving you instruction. The device is a touch screen device running some version of windows.
Here is the instructions screen. Very simple.
After I voted the machine made some clicking sounds and my vote was on the way to Jackson, MS.
I then handed my voter card to my neighbor. He took the card and gave it to the ladies at the table which then reset the card so it could be reinserted into the machine by someone else. All and all an easy process.
The question on everyone’s mind I know is “Who did you vote for?”. I’ll leave you with these Words of Wisdom:
I voted for the right one.
You have been found to be in violation of the “No cameras within a polling location” law. We’d kick you out of the coutry, but we’re pretty sure there isn’t any place worse then Mississippi.
I’m shocked they didn’t shut you down taking photos. At my place if you even brandished a cell phone they turned you away. Maybe that newfangled technology hasn’t become a threat down there yet.
Woohoo!!! 🙂 I hope we ALL voted for the right one~ haha.
Miss you…catch me up sometime!