Election Protection

Yesterday I volunteered with an organization called Election Protection, www.866ourvote.org, which basically ensures that voters actually get to vote and that their votes are counted. The goal was to avoid voting by provisional ballot if at all possible, as this often ends in the vote being thrown out.

The Election Protection volunteers I worked with were all attorneys, so we had our big books of Florida statutes and stuff.

The main problem we encountered? People were at the wrong precinct, and might wait an hour or two to find out they have to wait another hour or two to vote at the right precinct. Mostly just human error - on the voting populace's part, not the government's. It was fun at first, but as the hours went by I got a little worn out and tired. My partner was tireless, I gotta give her props for that. But I had trouble getting people to actually talk to me. She was better at it. Just a people-skills thing, I guess.

What really bothered me was these long lines people were waiting in. It just seems to me that it was so foreseeable. And the lines were really bad during early voting down here too - why not open more early voting locations? Instead of 17 in Dade, why not 34?

Next time, if the election isn't as "important" to people as this year's, I imagine many will stay home because they want to avoid the lines. This is not good!!

Now I am feeling rather motivated to work to improve voting conditions for 2012. I need a new political thing to work on anyway, since the campaign and election are over (I campaigned for Obama - did canvassing, voter registration, and phone banking).

My second motivation: why can't we get a printout of who we voted for? I get a printout when I go to the ATM!!

And it really is time to use computers - it just ain't that hard, people! It's pretty easy to prevent them from being hacked - just keep them off line, and have three portable data drives storing the information - so even two can be lost/destroyed. Then the drives are transported to the reporting location when the poll closes. Easy enough!