Thursday Oct 30, 2008
Just 5 days to go before the election. Of course, the election
is already happening in the 30-some states that support early
voting. Being a bit of a political junkie, I'm all set to watch
lots of TV on Tuesday night.
I quite honestly don't want another electoral college squeaker
like the last two elections. I do think if McCain is going to
win, it will be a squeaker. If Obama is going to win, probably
not as much so, if we believe the polls. It will be interesting
to see how well the polls match reality. While I'm hoping they
do, I've also seen enough times where the polls are messed up to
wait for the ultimate poll on Tuesday before I start celebrating
or pouting :).
Tuesday Oct 21, 2008
I checked out my county's elections web site, and discovered I
could vote early a few places near home, and one quite close to
my route to work. So I stopped by this morning on my way in to
Sun Austin and voted.
The polling place was doing steady business, and kept the four
people checking voter registrations busy during the time I was
there and paying attention. When I left it had slowed a bit,
but it was heartening to see the business they were doing.
Our county used electronic voting machines (they even called
them "computers", which they are, of course) that allow you to
select the precinct and ballot style. One of the poll judges
was there to help get that done, and go through an optional
demonstration for those who hadn't used the machines or needed a
review. I hadn't used the machine before (I wanted a paper
ballot last time I early voted) but I figured out I could work
it out, which turned out to be true.
The machines have a touch screen, and touching a candidates name
in a race selects, touching it again deselects. I didn't
actually have to change any of my votes, but I assume if you've
selected one candidate and touch another the selection would
change, or perhaps pop up a question asking whether you want to
change.
After I finished selecting my choices, I was given the option to
review. In some races I had not voted, as their was only one
selection, in all cases for the locally predominant party, and I
didn't care to give them a free vote. These were highlighted.
When I got to the last page of the review the "Vote" button on
top of the machine was highlighted and I hit it. The machine
gave me a last chance to re-review and noted I had not selected
a vote in some races. I said go ahead and complete my vote, and
I was done.
Overall, a good experience. In the past I've worried about the
security of these systems, and while I still do, I've come to
look at this in a more historical perspective. Vote fraud can
happen with paper ballot boxes or electronic voting machines,
though I think we need to work on making this more detectable in
the electronic case. I trust the local election officials to do
the right thing, as I have no reason to believe they won't.
Wednesday Mar 05, 2008
Yesterday I voted in the Texas primary at my polling place,
Round Rock High School, in the morning. The Democratic side
seemed busier than the Republican side (that's a switch!), but
didn't have lines at that time, around 9:30 a.m.
In the evening, I attended the caucus, or precinct convention,
at the same location. The caucus was supposed to start at 7:15
p.m. or shortly after the last voter voted, but we weren't let
in the building until 7:55. We all had to sign in and give our
presidential preference, and apparently had to have our
credentials verified, but I don't know if everyone got the
message on that. We had about 130 people show up, which is
impressive in what's been a heavily Republican district. I
recognized at least 4 of my neighbors there, and that was nice
to see. Sometime we Democrats feel a bit lost amongst our
conservative neighbors.
The Clinton campaign complained that at some precinct the Obama
supporters controlled the caucus packets, which are apparently
just the instructions and paperwork. In our case, the temporary
chair was a Clinton supporter. The first order of business
after calling the meeting to order and signing in was to elect a
permanent precinct convention chair and secretary. Two
candidates ran for chair, one an 18-year-old high school senior
supporting Obama, and another a 30-something Clinton supporter.
It was close, but the 18-year-old won 17-15. Someone then
nominated the Clinton supporter for vice chair, and we approved
that by acclamation.
After this, the chair announced the vote count. Obama won
around 59% to 41% or something close to that. We had 16
delegates to send to the county convention in Georgetown on
March 29, so Obama got 10 and Clinton got 6. I was in the Obama
camp and we had 10 volunteers to be delegates, and 4 of us,
including me, volunteered to be alternates.
I think the rules for all this are a bit weird. You can vote in
just the primary and the caucus, but not just in the caucus. I
suppose the idea is that the people who care about the party get
a second shot at voting. But I think Clinton has a point about
the caucuses excluding those who have to work that night or have
other duties. We have 12 hours to vote but we have to be at the
caucus at a specified time.
I enjoyed the experience, and kind of regret that I didn't raise
my hand to be a delegate to the county convention. Maybe
they'll call me as an alternate.
Wednesday May 02, 2007
With President Bush's veto of the funding bill for operations in
Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm wondering why the president isn't
doing what he's done with past bills to which he objected to
some aspect: add a signing statement saying he's going to
ignore certain parts.
Actually, I don't really wonder. He knows with a Democratic
majority on Congress, a signing statement for this bill would
cause a heap of trouble. It would draw attention to all the
other signing statements he's made, for one thing. Secondly,
the Democrats would go after him for it.
I've wondered at times about these signing statements that say
"I'm ignoring this part of this law." Isn't that saying the
president will not defend the laws of the nation, even though
the president took a vow to do that very thing? I've also
wondered if that in itself is an impeachable offense.
Monday Jan 08, 2007
Here in the Austin area, in addition to birds
falling out of the sky downtown, we are having the intrigue
of a race of speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. The
current speaker, Republican Tom Craddick, has been speaker for
four years, and many in the opposition, and some in the
majority, do not like his leadership style. A couple of other
Republicans and a Democrat entered the race to unseat him, and
it has now narrowed down to a race of Craddick and Jim Pitts,
with each claiming victory. The legislature opens tomorrow, and
it may be interesting to see what happens in this contest.
There are no rules for electing the speaker, and current debate
in the paper is whether the newly sworn in representatives will
elect to have a secret ballot or an open one. The problem with
an open ballot is retribution if you vote for the loser. The
problem with a secret ballot is that the public doesn't know for
whom their representatives voted.
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