So Obama Won...

[Kitsa]

We (and by that I mean my immediate neighborhood) vote in the library of an elementary school. There are always five or six elderly pollworkers lined up at a table and you give them your name. Then the fun begins while they search through a big book to see if you're registered. I gave them my ID to make it easier, but they didn't ask for it.

My real name is a long French one and apparently one of the old women thought it droll. So she called it out to all of her companions to see if they'd ever heard of it, while I stood there waiting with twenty people behind me. So everyone else in line knew exactly who, by name, was voting. Great.

After you work your way down the line of oldfolk, they code a card in a little machine and give it to you. You go to an open voting booth (little computer on stilts that prints out the completed ballot like a receipt). The old people who are voting never know how to use the computers and generally anyone under 60 has to act as tech support. Then you scroll through and touch the screen for who you want and when you finish the receipt-ballot is printed up behind a little window and shoots off somewhere.

Then you take your card out and return it to the guy and get a sticker so you can go get free Starbucks.

[glowbelly]

in cuyahoga county, ohio, we used paper ballots. fill in the bubble style. one of the voters next to me said "i feel like i'm taking a test." then the ballot got slipped into some optical scanner thing to make sure we were in the right district or whatev and then all the ballots go to somewhere to be counted.