Voted
It was remarkably little trouble. There was no line. I'm hoping that means we have enough polling stations in the area (or that most potential voters are at work or school at this hour) rather than that no one is bothering.
I showed the card which had been mailed to me which identifies my polling place before I was asked for anything. I wasn't asked for any other ID. Imho, all voters *should* be asked for ID. My impression is that the default of no ID is based in the idea that people live in the same place long enough that they'd be known to the poll workers. This is no longer reliably the case.
I wore a fresh-made "Hold your nose and vote for Kerry" button--got one compliment and handed out two business cards, one of which may have been welcome.
I forgot to check on whether the voting machine was a Shouptronic (as promised by mypollingplace.com), but it has a nice clean interface. You press a spot next to your preferred
candidate's name, and it lights up. Unfortunately, there was no paper trail.
If I'd realized how few candidates I was dealing with, I might have done more research. As it was, I voted for Kerry, Spector (Senate, moderate Republican, seems harmless), and Bradly (House, Democrat, voted against handing suspects over to foreign governments to be tortured). Since Philadelphia is Kerry country and my other two votes are for incumbants, I'm relatively sure that my vote will be counted.
I showed the card which had been mailed to me which identifies my polling place before I was asked for anything. I wasn't asked for any other ID. Imho, all voters *should* be asked for ID. My impression is that the default of no ID is based in the idea that people live in the same place long enough that they'd be known to the poll workers. This is no longer reliably the case.
I wore a fresh-made "Hold your nose and vote for Kerry" button--got one compliment and handed out two business cards, one of which may have been welcome.
I forgot to check on whether the voting machine was a Shouptronic (as promised by mypollingplace.com), but it has a nice clean interface. You press a spot next to your preferred
candidate's name, and it lights up. Unfortunately, there was no paper trail.
If I'd realized how few candidates I was dealing with, I might have done more research. As it was, I voted for Kerry, Spector (Senate, moderate Republican, seems harmless), and Bradly (House, Democrat, voted against handing suspects over to foreign governments to be tortured). Since Philadelphia is Kerry country and my other two votes are for incumbants, I'm relatively sure that my vote will be counted.