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Does anyone know if the Boards of Elections across the state have any review process following the primary to make things better for the general election in November?
In any event, it might be useful for TAP bloggers, occasional posters and readers to write here about their experiences with the new voting systems.
I voted in the village of Croton on Hudson in Westchester County and then was a poll watcher at PS32 in the Bronx for about 6 hours. My observations after the flip. |
| It appears to me that there was little or no thought put into the movement of the voter through the polling place with the new system. Both polling sites I saw essentially set themselves up as if there still were lever machines. The result is that voters signing in and those headed to the ballot scanner to cast their ballot got in each other's way. There were no big crowds at either polling place, but with just a handful it got very confusing. If there were long lines, it would be very frustrating for the voter accustomed to the lever machines. While poll watching, yesterday I saw one voter leave in frustration without having voted.
There was far too much handling of the voter's ballot by poll workers. In the ideal world, the voter would be handed a ballot by the poll worker and then no one else would touch it until after the ballot has been cast. I observed poll workers holding completed ballots, both in and out of the privacy sleeve and the voter was no where to be found. All those voters were eventually tracked down, we hope, and their ballots were placed in the scanner.
In Westchester, my polling place has 5 or 6 EDs. Each ED had their own scanner. In the Bronx, there were 7 EDs and there were two scanners. Apparently, there were supposed to have been three, but clearly there were only two. This smells a bit like Ohio to me. Between the 7 EDs there were just 260 votes cast. There might be ten times that many in November.
Completing the paper ballots required much more poll worker assistance than I have observed in the past. When a voter needs assistance with completing their ballot, generally the poll workers try to have both a Dem poll worker and a Rep poll worker present. But privacy booths are so small that it was not possible for two poll workers to be present,one helping and one watching. When some voters went to use the BMD (ballot marking device), it generally took about 5 or 6 poll workers to assist.
One more observation. I think there should be ban on cell phone use while completing a ballot. On several occasions I observed voters talking on their phones while completing their ballots. This did not sit well with me. But a voter is allowed to take a cheat sheet with them to the polls or bring anyone to assist them, so what's wrong with a cell phone. I realized later that cell phone users could prove to the person on the other end that they had voted a certain way by sending a photograph of their ballot. This would be a relatively simple way to pay people for their votes.
So what did you see? |
