This year, closest precinct, serving lots of people in wheelchairs or other forms of diversity got consolidated with one up the road. New location is up or down a steep hill in all directions from any form of transit or even sidewalk, though once at the front door, the interior is wheelchair accessible. So the few remaining folks who hadn't already switched to mail-in voting must have done so or decided to walk up the hill to use the accessible unit. I already voted absentee, but maybe if I get time I will wander by and say hi and check things out.
In King County, ballots are paper though pollworkers always got encouraged to invite people to vote on the electronic, accessible unit. The electronic unit always took longer than paper even if a voter was just using the touch screen, not using the audio. So sometimes this led to lines separate from slight lines when all 8 or 10 of the booths were in use.
On the early voting turnout front, there was ONE place where people could vote early in the South end of the county. King County is geographically huge and there would also be the awkward matter of the governor's race and the parts of the county likely to vote different ways on that. Sitting governor is not terrible for a Democrat except she is running a totally unspectacular campaign and could just bore the voters to death. Opponent is so slimy I want to degrease the television every time his ads appear. However, since he lost by 124 votes after multiple recounts last time, race is being sold as a rematch and we have been subjected anew to dopey ideas about the minimum wage, transit, taxes and the usual Repbulican tripe.
Early reports are that in counties that did more early voting and tend to vote Republican turnout is running high. If the Dems lost this one for not paying attention to King County on this score, they have only themselves to blame. But should be interesting....
DC
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 7:48 AM, shag <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
>
> I went to work early for our usual code release during maintenance hours.
> Left to get to the polls at 6:00 a.m. (R wanted to early vote but there
> was an hour wait on Sat.) Besides, I wanted to get a load of voting with a
> bunch of rich people, where our precinct was located. Our last precinct
> was in a museum. heh. Our new neighborhood is not quite as rich. heh heh.
>
> Finally voted by 8:20 a.m. or so. Previous years, according to people
> who've lived in the area awhile, the wait was 10-15 minutes at that time
> of day.
>
> We had 6 sorry ass electronic voting booths.
>
> We had 6 sorry ass voting booths for my town of 1800 people when I lived
> in the boondocks of upstate NY. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot man, whiskey tango
> foxtrot.
>
>
> --
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws
> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
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