Let's hear it for Dixville Notch
Martin Ambuhl
2000 Bosh 21 Gore 5
2004 Bush 19 Kerry 6
2008 McCain 6 Obama 15
![Reinhold [Rey] Aman's profile photo](http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/ALV-UjWaT0LUDfKA5mIbowVbHAIA3z5Ut7Y8IMosdHd3OIhPWDnj=s40-c)
Reinhold [Rey] Aman
I bet Left-of-Lenin Ambuhl is creaming his pink panties.
--
~~~ Reinhold [Rey] Aman ~~~
Martin Ambuhl
> Martin Ambuhl jubilated:
>
>> Dixville Notch, NH has seen the error of its ways:
>>
>> 2000 Bosh 21 Gore 5
>> 2004 Bush 19 Kerry 6
>> 2008 McCain 6 Obama 15
>
> I bet Left-of-Lenin Ambuhl is creaming his pink panties.
I bet Sister Rey is so politically illiterate that he doesn't know that
someone to the "Left of Lenin" wouldn't find any pleasure inan Obama win
at all.
John Dean
Declining population or reducing turnout?
--
John Dean
Oxford
Ian Jackson
<john...@fraglineone.net> writes
>Martin Ambuhl wrote:
>> Dixville Notch, NH has seen the error of its ways:
>>
>> 2000 Bosh 21 Gore 5
>> 2004 Bush 19 Kerry 6
>> 2008 McCain 6 Obama 15
>
>Declining population or reducing turnout?
Yes, I heard on the BBC World Service (at around 0400 UK time) that it
is a tradition for the burghers of Dixville Notch to wait for the stroke
of midnight, cast their votes, count them and then immediately declare
the results.
I have to admit some surprise that it is permitted to allow the results
to be released before normal closing time (10pm in the UK). This could
influence the voting of those areas where the poling stations are still
open. Still, I suppose that the USA has a problem with having five time
zones. It would be difficult to synchronise voting times.
Based on the Dixville Notch results, I wonder if Jon Snow has used his
Swingometer to predict the swing to the Democrats for the whole USA
[I'll leave the explanations to someone else.]
--
Ian
Nick Spalding
on Tue, 4 Nov 2008 14:15:14 +0000:
Wrong Snow. Cousin Peter is the Swingometer expert.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Ian Jackson
<spal...@iol.ie> writes
Oops! My mistake!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/swingometer/html/labcon.stm
--
Ian
John Kane
<ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <6nb2ieFkod7...@mid.individual.net>, John Dean
> <john-d...@fraglineone.net> writes
>
> >Martin Ambuhl wrote:
> >> Dixville Notch, NH has seen the error of its ways:
>
> >> 2000 Bosh 21 Gore 5
> >> 2004 Bush 19 Kerry 6
> >> 2008 McCain 6 Obama 15
>
> >Declining population or reducing turnout?
>
> Yes, I heard on the BBC World Service (at around 0400 UK time) that it
> is a tradition for the burghers of Dixville Notch to wait for the stroke
> of midnight, cast their votes, count them and then immediately declare
> the results.
>
> I have to admit some surprise that it is permitted to allow the results
> to be released before normal closing time (10pm in the UK). This could
> influence the voting of those areas where the poling stations are still
> open. Still, I suppose that the USA has a problem with having five time
> zones. It would be difficult to synchronise voting times.
I believe that voting is a state issue or even a county issue so each
state or county presumably can do what it wants.
In the last Canadian federal election, which was held last month, the
opening and closing times for polls varied by province/time zone to
partly deal with this problem. We have six time zones although
Newfoundland is only 1/2 hour earler than Atlantic time.
As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
which had 200 seperate votes on it.
John Kane Kingston ON Canada
Nick Spalding
on Tue, 4 Nov 2008 15:36:58 +0000:
Damn, I missed something there, it should have been:
Wrong sort of Snow.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
tony cooper
<jrkr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Nov 4, 9:15 am, Ian Jackson
><ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In message <6nb2ieFkod7...@mid.individual.net>, John Dean
>> <john-d...@fraglineone.net> writes
>>
>> >Martin Ambuhl wrote:
>> >> Dixville Notch, NH has seen the error of its ways:
>>
>> >> 2000 Bosh 21 Gore 5
>> >> 2004 Bush 19 Kerry 6
>> >> 2008 McCain 6 Obama 15
>>
>> >Declining population or reducing turnout?
>>
>> Yes, I heard on the BBC World Service (at around 0400 UK time) that it
>> is a tradition for the burghers of Dixville Notch to wait for the stroke
>> of midnight, cast their votes, count them and then immediately declare
>> the results.
>>
>> I have to admit some surprise that it is permitted to allow the results
>> to be released before normal closing time (10pm in the UK). This could
>> influence the voting of those areas where the poling stations are still
>> open. Still, I suppose that the USA has a problem with having five time
>> zones. It would be difficult to synchronise voting times.
>
>I believe that voting is a state issue or even a county issue so each
>state or county presumably can do what it wants.
The release of voting information as the voting progresses is
primarily a decision that the media in the state makes. In the
penultimate Presidential election, the Florida media was reporting
results and exit polls as the results came in.
The media was roundly criticized for this, and charged with affecting
voting in the Florida Panhandle which is in a different time zone than
the rest of the state. In the last election, the media was more
responsible in this.
Of course, "the media" is an ambiguous phrase in the US. The local
television channels may do things one way in their own portion of the
news reports, but they may also carry a network news portion. They
can't control what the network news provides. We also have national
channels like CNBC that do not have locally-produced segments.
In the US, when you refer to "the media", you have to specify which
media is included. There are five television channels in this market
that are essentially "local" and have locally-produced news
programming.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Roland Hutchinson
> As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
> women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
> lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
> Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
> which had 200 seperate votes on it.
They showed Senator Obama casting his votes live on TV earlier today. He
managed to whiz through the ballot in a mere twenty minutes or so (having
presumably come very well prepared), while the network newspeople wondered
aloud why it was taking so long. Now I know, thanks to AUE.
I suppose this is the current manifestation of the Illinois (particularly
Cook County) tradition of "vote early and often".
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> Martin Ambuhl wrote:
> > Dixville Notch, NH has seen the error of its ways:
>
> > 2000 Bosh 21 Gore 5
> > 2004 Bush 19 Kerry 6
> > 2008 McCain 6 Obama 15
>
> Declining population or reducing turnout?
The article I read about quoted a city (town? village? notch?)
official as saying the important thing was not the result (true) but
that the turnout was 100 percent, so I'm plumping for declining
population.
--
Jerry Friedman
Mark Brader
> The article I read about quoted a city (town? village? notch?)
> official as saying the important thing was not the result (true) but
It has to be 100% in order for them to be allowed to release the results
early, as I understand it. So that's part of the tradition.
> so I'm plumping for declining population.
Looks that way.
--
Mark Brader | "Now I feel stupid. Well, I guess it's not bad
Toronto | if that happens once a decade or so."
m...@vex.net | --Al Fargnoli
Garrett Wollman
Ian Jackson <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Yes, I heard on the BBC World Service (at around 0400 UK time) that it
>is a tradition for the burghers of Dixville Notch to wait for the stroke
>of midnight, cast their votes, count them and then immediately declare
>the results.
>
>I have to admit some surprise that it is permitted to allow the results
>to be released before normal closing time (10pm in the UK).
Once all registered voters have voted, there is no reason not to
count the ballots and announce the results.
>This could influence the voting of those areas where the poling
>stations are still open. Still, I suppose that the USA has a problem
>with having five time zones.
Eight, actually, but people in the territories don't get to vote for
President. (That's American Samoa [-11], Guam and the Northern
Marianas [-10], and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands [-4].)
The news media will know the outcome of the presidential race by about
8:30 EST [UTC-5] tonight. They will probably hold off on announcing
it until 10:00. Alaska has never mattered in the presidential
election since it became a state; Hawaii has the same closing time as
California.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
wol...@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness
Mark Brader
> Yes, I heard on the BBC World Service (at around 0400 UK time) that it
> is a tradition for the burghers of Dixville Notch to wait for the stroke
> of midnight, cast their votes, count them and then immediately declare
> the results.
>
> I have to admit some surprise that it is permitted to allow the results
> to be released before normal closing time (10pm in the UK).
It looks like a holdover of a rule dating from before long-distance
communication was an everyday thing. Once everybody in Dixville Notch
has voted, who else could possibly be influenced by the result?
> Still, I suppose that the USA has a problem with having five time
> zones.
Which one did you miss, Alaska or Hawaii-Aleutian?
There were 7 time zones in the US until the Alaska realigned its zones
in 1983. The state previously used what were called Pacific, Yukon,
Alaska-Hawaii, and Bering Time (zones -8 though -11). In 1983 they
switched to using just the two middle zones, which were renamed Alaska
and Hawaii-Aleutian respectively. (Clocks in the Panhandle went back
an hour; in the rest of the state they mostly moved ahead an hour.)
Zone -11 is still used in American Samoa, now under the name Samoa Time,
but as a territory they don't vote in presidential elections.
> It would be difficult to synchronise voting times.
Canada also has 6 time zones (it was 7 until the Yukon decided they'd
rather be on Pacific than Yukon Time). Until the 1990s we didn't
try synchronizing voting hours; we just had a law prohibiting the
publication of election results in areas where the polls were still
open. This did the job reasonably well until anarchic types on the
Internet decided it was unjustifiable censorship and were able to
get away with subverting it, and the complaints from people in the
western time zones, who did not like the advantage of being able to
vote with additional information available, increased.
So starting in 1997 the government ordered the voting hours changed to:
time polls close polls close
zone local time EST
NST(-3:30) 8:30 7:00
AST(-4) 8:30 7:30
EST(-5) 9:30 9:30
CST(-6) 8:30 9:30
MST(-7) 7:30 9:30
PST(-8) 7:00 10:00
In each case the opening hours are the same, only AM instead of PM.
Unfortunately, the geniuses responsible for this system forgot that
most, but not all, Canadians are daylight saving time victims. When
the first election under the new system was held, DST was in effect,
and so, what we *really* got was:
time polls close polls close
zone local time EDT
NDT(-2:30) 8:30 7:00
ADT(-3) 8:30 7:30
EDT(-4) 9:30 9:30
CDT(-5) 8:30 9:30
CST(-6) 8:30 10:30
MDT(-6) 7:30 9:30
PDT(-7) 7:00 10:00
and Saskatchewan, of all places, became the last to report in.
(The bug in the law was fixed after the election.)
--
Mark Brader | "Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. The rest of the
Toronto | time you go by the Book, which is mostly a collection
m...@vex.net | of nitwit ideas that worked. -- Niven & Pournelle
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Garrett Wollman
jerry_f...@yahoo.com <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>The article I read about quoted a city (town? village? notch?)
Dixville Notch is part of the township of Dixville. (Townships in New
Hampshire are unincorporated communities -- there are very few of
them, and I believe all are in Coos County.)
Default User
> Based on the Dixville Notch results, I wonder if Jon Snow has used
> his Swingometer to predict the swing to the Democrats for the whole
> USA [I'll leave the explanations to someone else.]
Forget the swing, what about the swong?
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
Skitt
[...]
> As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
> women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
> lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
> Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
> which had 200 seperate votes on it.
I hope her legs are OK after dancing so long. "Seperate", eh?
--
Skitt (AmE)
jes' messin' around
Mike Lyle
> Roland Hutchinson wrote:
>> John Kane wrote:
[...]
>>> Cook County Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on
>>> the ballet which had 200 seperate votes on it.
>>
>> They showed Senator Obama casting his votes live on TV earlier
>> today. He managed to whiz through the ballot in a mere twenty
>> minutes or so (having presumably come very well prepared), while the
>> network newspeople wondered aloud why it was taking so long. Now I
>> know, thanks to AUE.
>>
>
> I don't see how that woman could spend an hour and half on the ballot.
> It took me about ten minutes,
[...]
You weren't in Cook County. The ballot only took her a few minutes; it
was the Terpsichorean entertainment provided by a thoughtful management
which enthralled her for an hour and a half.
>
> obCommonSpellingErrors: I've noticed two words that are almost always
> misspelled in emails and on the Internet are "definitely" and
> "separate." I wonder if they are showing up in some dictionaries with
> the alternate spellings.
Quite.
--
Mike.
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<my.sp...@verizon.net> wrote:
>John Kane wrote:
>
>> As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
>> women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
>> lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
>> Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
>> which had 200 seperate votes on it.
>
>They showed Senator Obama casting his votes live on TV earlier today. He
>managed to whiz through the ballot in a mere twenty minutes or so (having
>presumably come very well prepared), while the network newspeople wondered
>aloud why it was taking so long. Now I know, thanks to AUE.
I noticed that Obama had his kids with him while he was casting his votes.
They were, in principle, in a position to see what he was doing and thereby
breach the secrecy of the voting. Is this normally allowed?
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Robin Bignall
wrote:
Eats, shoots and leaves on the line.
--
Robin
(BrE)
Herts, England
ray o'hara
The declining economy forcing layoffs at the Balsams Resort the
main{only?} employer there.
ray o'hara
<ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <6nb2ieFkod7...@mid.individual.net>, John Dean
20 people in the most remote part of NH aren't much of an influence on
anybody.
R H Draney
>
>I noticed that Obama had his kids with him while he was casting his votes.
>They were, in principle, in a position to see what he was doing and thereby
>breach the secrecy of the voting. Is this normally allowed?
It's actively encouraged, under the rubric of getting children interested in the
democratic process...the point of the "secret ballot" is that you're not
required to tell anyone how you vote, but if you *want* to share that
information, particularly with a member of your own family, that's entirely up
to you....r
--
"Governor Palin, I served with Dan Quayle.
I knew Dan Quayle; Dan Quayle was a friend of mine.
Governor Palin, you're no Dan Quayle."
ray o'hara
>
> - Show quoted text -
Vmoting is a state issue as to poll times.
Dixville is just a human "groundhogs", cute but of no real account.
tony cooper
I'm not sure what you mean by "secrecy of the voting". We are allowed
to bring children into the voting area* if we want to. It's not
encouraged, but election officials are not going to volunteer to
baby-sit. Handicapped people can bring someone into the voting area
to assist them. There's no rule that I know of about secrecy. We are
entitled to vote in secret, but we are not required to be secretive.
*While we speak of "voting booths", where I vote the "booth" looks
like this:
http://timesnews.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/voting_booths.jpg
Our district uses paper ballots and not touch screens, though.
ray o'hara
Dixville notch is an unincorporated town, that means its not a real
town with a local government, it depends on the county and state for
local services.
It's way far north in the White Mts near the Canadian border. it is a
very scenic area of mountains and clean lakes and not much else.
Mark Brader
>> I noticed that Obama had his kids with him while he was casting his votes.
>> They were, in principle, in a position to see what he was doing and thereby
>> breach the secrecy of the voting. Is this normally allowed?
R.H. Draney (and similarly Tony Cooper) replies:
> the point of the "secret ballot" is that you're not
> required to tell anyone how you vote, but if you *want* to share that
> information, particularly with a member of your own family, that's
> entirely up to you.
The way I heard it, one reason for the secret ballot was to make it
impossible for anyone to sell their vote. This only works if you're
*not allowed* to let anyone else see which way you actually voted.
You can *tell* someone else, but they have to take your word for it.
Another reason, of course, was to protect voters from intimidation
within the polling station, and the type of secret ballot that R.H.
and Tony refer to does provide that benefit.
Is this, too, something that varies between states in the US?
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "A secret proclamation? How unusual!"
m...@vex.net -- Arsenic and Old Lace
tony cooper
>Peter Duncanson asks:
>>> I noticed that Obama had his kids with him while he was casting his votes.
>>> They were, in principle, in a position to see what he was doing and thereby
>>> breach the secrecy of the voting. Is this normally allowed?
>
>R.H. Draney (and similarly Tony Cooper) replies:
>> the point of the "secret ballot" is that you're not
>> required to tell anyone how you vote, but if you *want* to share that
>> information, particularly with a member of your own family, that's
>> entirely up to you.
>
>The way I heard it, one reason for the secret ballot was to make it
>impossible for anyone to sell their vote. This only works if you're
>*not allowed* to let anyone else see which way you actually voted.
>You can *tell* someone else, but they have to take your word for it.
>
>Another reason, of course, was to protect voters from intimidation
>within the polling station, and the type of secret ballot that R.H.
>and Tony refer to does provide that benefit.
>
>Is this, too, something that varies between states in the US?
Not that I know of. This isn't the type of thing that the state
election laws would cover. The state and county election laws deal
with deciding the voting locations, designing the actual ballot,
determining the times the polls will be open, and choosing the means
of voting (paper ballots, touch screens, etc). The state and county
powers in this area stop at the point where the voter steps into the
booth.
As I've mentioned many times, each county in Florida has a Supervisor
of Elections, and the holder of that office sets many rules for that
county. Tonight, for example, the SofE authorized a polling station
in Orange County to stay open an extra hour because their was some
confusion about which polling location area residents should vote in.
A decision was made this afternoon to extend the hours to allow people
who went to the wrong place to get to the right place.
The polls closed at 7:00 PM in Florida. However, the SofE in most
counties allow anyone in line at 7:00 PM to vote. In one Orange
County precinct the last person in line at 7:00 PM didn't get to vote
until almost 10:30 PM.
Here's a fact that will surprise some...Senator Joe Biden, our Vice
President-elect, was on the ballot in Delaware and won re-election.
He will, of course, resign his Senate seat and the Governor of
Delaware will appoint a replacement.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> Peter Duncanson asks:
>
> >> I noticed that Obama had his kids with him while he was casting his votes.
> >> They were, in principle, in a position to see what he was doing and thereby
> >> breach the secrecy of the voting. Is this normally allowed?
>
> R.H. Draney (and similarly Tony Cooper) replies:
>
> > the point of the "secret ballot" is that you're not
> > required to tell anyone how you vote, but if you *want* to share that
> > information, particularly with a member of your own family, that's
> > entirely up to you.
>
> The way I heard it, one reason for the secret ballot was to make it
> impossible for anyone to sell their vote. This only works if you're
> *not allowed* to let anyone else see which way you actually voted.
> You can *tell* someone else, but they have to take your word for it.
I don't know the law, but I think there might be some difficulty
having someone there who was not a family member or providing needed
assistance.
> Another reason, of course, was to protect voters from intimidation
> within the polling station, and the type of secret ballot that R.H.
> and Tony refer to does provide that benefit.
>
> Is this, too, something that varies between states in the US?
I can report that I saw a few people with kids when I voted early in
New Mexico this year, and that I remember being in the booth as a tad
watching my mother vote, maybe in '68 or '72, in Ohio.
--
Jerry Friedman
Richard Maurer
The way I heard it, one reason for the secret ballot
was to make it impossible for anyone to sell their vote.
This only works if you're *not allowed* to let anyone
else see which way you actually voted. You can *tell*
someone else, but they have to take your word for it.
Too bad that the election people are encouraging
vote-by-mail. I suppose that that will continue until
the vote-selling scandals grow bigger and bigger and .... .
-- ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(I see your hair is burnin')
Mark Brader
>> The way I heard it, one reason for the secret ballot
>> was to make it impossible for anyone to sell their vote.
>> This only works if you're *not allowed* to let anyone
Richard Maurer:
> Too bad that the election people are encouraging
> vote-by-mail.
Eek, I hadn't even thought about that implication. Voting by a
method as unreliable as mail just seems so ludicrous in the first
place. But at least you do get to use paper ballots that way.
--
Mark Brader "Hey, I don't want to control people's lives!
Toronto (If they did things right, I wouldn't have to.)"
m...@vex.net -- "Coach"
ray o'hara
> Here's a fact that will surprise some...Senator Joe Biden, our Vice
> President-elect, was on the ballot in Delaware and won re-election.
> He will, of course, resign his Senate seat and the Governor of
> Delaware will appoint a replacement.
>
> --
>
> - Show quoted text -
Joe Lieberman did the same thing when he was Gore's running mate.
It kept him in the Senate.
It does seem a bit shady but it's legal.
John Dean
> BrE filted:
>>
>> I noticed that Obama had his kids with him while he was casting his
>> votes. They were, in principle, in a position to see what he was
>> doing and thereby breach the secrecy of the voting. Is this normally
>> allowed?
>
> It's actively encouraged, under the rubric of getting children
> interested in the democratic process...the point of the "secret
> ballot" is that you're not required to tell anyone how you vote, but
> if you *want* to share that information, particularly with a member
> of your own family, that's entirely up to you....r
Absolutely. We used to take our kids into the voting booth.
I saw pictures of McCain peering over Cindy's shoulder while she wielded the
stylus. Obviously to no avail.
But why, even so, does it take so long to even *get* to the station? People
were said to be queuing for up to four hours just to get through the door.
Is no-one outraged at this? Is there no movement to provide enough stations
/ machines so people can get in and out within, say, half an hour? Maybe you
should go back to paper votes - over here it typically takes less than five
minutes to creep in, crap and creep out again.
--
John Dean
Oxford
Wood Avens
<john...@fraglineone.net> wrote:
>But why, even so, does it take so long to even *get* to the station? People
>were said to be queuing for up to four hours just to get through the door.
>Is no-one outraged at this? Is there no movement to provide enough stations
>/ machines so people can get in and out within, say, half an hour? Maybe you
>should go back to paper votes - over here it typically takes less than five
>minutes to creep in, crap and creep out again.
Here (the UK), though, we just have to put one cross against one name
in a list of probably less than half a dozen -- or, in local
elections, a cross for the local council and another for the district.
Leftpondians have to vote not just for the President but for all sorts
of other people including judges, and maybe for specific propositions
(as in a referendum here) as well. Could take hours (and clearly
does).
--
Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @
John Holmes
>
> The polls closed at 7:00 PM in Florida. However, the SofE in most
> counties allow anyone in line at 7:00 PM to vote. In one Orange
> County precinct the last person in line at 7:00 PM didn't get to vote
> until almost 10:30 PM.
Why on earth does it take so long? I've never had to wait more than 5-10
minutes here. Of course, we have compulsory voting. There'd be riots if
people had to wait for hours.
So, are they deliberately trying to make it is difficult as possible? To
test how badly people really want to vote?
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au
the Omrud
> tony cooper wrote:
>>
>> The polls closed at 7:00 PM in Florida. However, the SofE in most
>> counties allow anyone in line at 7:00 PM to vote. In one Orange
>> County precinct the last person in line at 7:00 PM didn't get to vote
>> until almost 10:30 PM.
>
> Why on earth does it take so long? I've never had to wait more than 5-10
> minutes here. Of course, we have compulsory voting. There'd be riots if
> people had to wait for hours.
>
> So, are they deliberately trying to make it is difficult as possible? To
> test how badly people really want to vote?
I can't remember ever waiting to vote in the UK. Do we have more
polling stations per head?
--
David
Amethyst Deceiver
ma...@peterduncanson.net says...
It is in the UK. YoungBloke has accompanied me into the booth since he
was a babe in arms.
--
Linz
Wet Yorks via Cambridge, York, London and Watford
My accent may vary
the Omrud
Also, I believe you can take somebody into the booth to help you if you
wish, e.g. if you are blind. At one time there seemed to be a policeman
in every polling station to help those without friends but I haven't
seen one for decades.
--
David
Nick Spalding
on Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:18:38 GMT:
Nor I here in Ireland. I've been voting here for more than forty years
and it's one of those odd social occasions, like funerals, when you meet
people you haven't seen in years.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
tony cooper
wrote:
>tony cooper wrote:
>>
>> The polls closed at 7:00 PM in Florida. However, the SofE in most
>> counties allow anyone in line at 7:00 PM to vote. In one Orange
>> County precinct the last person in line at 7:00 PM didn't get to vote
>> until almost 10:30 PM.
>
>Why on earth does it take so long? I've never had to wait more than 5-10
>minutes here. Of course, we have compulsory voting. There'd be riots if
>people had to wait for hours.
>
>So, are they deliberately trying to make it is difficult as possible? To
>test how badly people really want to vote?
Quite the opposite. The number of registered voters increased
dramatically and more eligible people voted. The poll station that I
referred to above is on the campus of the University of Central
Florida. More young people voted than was expected. Your compulsory
voting system means that election officials can better predict how
many people will vote.
I voted early, almost two weeks before the election, and waited about
35 minutes in line. Some early voters waited hours.
We are somewhat restricted in providing places to vote, so each
location had to handle a large number of voters. Space must be
contracted for well in advance, poll workers found and hired, and
booths and machines provided. The election offices have a budget, and
they can't buy an unlimited number of booths and machines.
It's quite heartening that the young people who voted at UCF stayed in
line even when it was quite clear the election had been decided.
tony cooper
<john...@fraglineone.net> wrote:
>But why, even so, does it take so long to even *get* to the station? People
>were said to be queuing for up to four hours just to get through the door.
>Is no-one outraged at this?
I would say that most Americans, rather than being outraged, were
proud of the lines and the waiting. The percentage of eligible people
who register the vote has been dismally low in past years. The
percentage of registered voters who actually vote has also been
dismally low. Both of those numbers jumped up considerably this year.
Voter apathy took a beating.
We have trouble funding our schools in Florida. Other public services
have been curtailed by funding problems. We didn't divert state funds
into more voting space, personnel, and machines, and that caused
longer waiting time at the polls. A very sensible sacrifice.
Richard Fontana
> But why, even so, does it take so long to even *get* to the station? People
> were said to be queuing for up to four hours just to get through the door.
Certainly that is not at all typical of past presidential elections, which
have been characterized by much lower turnout and greater
potential-electorate apathy. To some degree election bureaucrats
anticipated the highter turnout this year and prepared for it; I'm
impressed that there seem to have been relatively few election process
problems.
In past elections I've voted in, I don't recall any long lines, or hearing
about long lines in other places. There was a fairly long line when I
voted in the Democratic Party primary in Brooklyn (FLCIA) several months
ago. I voted in a suburb of Bwahston yesterday at around 10:30am and
the whole process was quite quick, but I would guess that a couple of
hours earlier there must have been long lines. One issue is that Election
Day is held on a Tuesday and is not a general public holiday, so many
people try to vote before or after going to w*rk.
--
Richard Fontana
John Kane
> John Kane wrote:
> > As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
> > women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
> > lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
> > Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
> > which had 200 seperate votes on it.
>
> They showed Senator Obama casting his votes live on TV earlier today. He
> managed to whiz through the ballot in a mere twenty minutes or so (having
> presumably come very well prepared), while the network newspeople wondered
> aloud why it was taking so long. Now I know, thanks to AUE.
>
> Cook County) tradition of "vote early and often".
She did say that assuming Cook Country continued its long standing
traditions, she expected her vote to be mulitplied by 15.
John Kane Kingston ON Canad
John Kane
wrote:
> Murray Arnow wrote:
> > Roland Hutchinson wrote:
> >> John Kane wrote:
> [...]
> >>> Cook County Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on
> >>> the ballet which had 200 seperate votes on it.
>
> >> They showed Senator Obama casting his votes live on TV earlier
> >> today. He managed to whiz through the ballot in a mere twenty
> >> minutes or so (having presumably come very well prepared), while the
> >> network newspeople wondered aloud why it was taking so long. Now I
> >> know, thanks to AUE.
>
> > I don't see how that woman could spend an hour and half on the ballot.
> > It took me about ten minutes,
>
> [...]
>
> You weren't in Cook County. The ballot only took her a few minutes; it
> was the Terpsichorean entertainment provided by a thoughtful management
> which enthralled her for an hour and a half.
Neither was she. She was in Toronto I believe.
John Kane Kingston ON Toronto
ray o'hara
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2008 11:25:29 -0000, "John Dean"
>
Look at who you elect there Republicans hate funding anything.
.
I vote at a local grammar school, they set up about 30 voting booths
which is adequate to serve the precinct, the town has 7 of these
stations which is more than enough to handle the voting population.
ray o'hara
> Nick Spalding wrote:
> >... I've been voting here for more than forty years
> >and it's one of those odd social occasions, like funerals, when you meet
> >people you haven't seen in years.
>
> occasions, suggests a somewhat dreary life.
I gather you've never been to an Irish wake.
Nick Spalding
on Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:21:03 GMT:
> Nick Spalding wrote:
>
> >... I've been voting here for more than forty years
> >and it's one of those odd social occasions, like funerals, when you meet
> >people you haven't seen in years.
>
> Calling voting and funerals social occasions, albeit odd social
> occasions, suggests a somewhat dreary life.
What other word would you use? They certainly aren't business ones.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
the Omrud
> communities, voters are directed to their home precincts to vote. Where
> I live there is no congestion because of a smaller population density
> than in other precincts, and the queuing is minimal.
>
> This time I voted early. The early-voting locations accepted voters from
> nearly every precinct. The delay to get to a voting machine was
> significant. That is reason one.
That contains a concept unfamiliar to the Brit voter. Your Polling
Station (as they are called) is fixed as the one closest to your home.
You can't vote anywhere else. The officers in the polling station have
a printout of the Electoral Register for their own small constituency;
if you're not on the list, you can't vote there.
> Reason two is that more than federal offices are decided on. There are
> local elections, initiatives, referenda, changes in constitutions and so
> on, that often make their ways to the ballots. In areas where there are
> major legal decisions, the changes are written on the ballot. Voters who
> haven't paid attention prior to the election often make their decisions
> on how to vote at this time. Well, reading this ballot takes time, and
> some places have a long list of referenda; hence, long queues.
And that is a big difference. I don't remember having to cast more than
two votes. Three would be unusual and could only happen if General,
County and District Elections coincided, which they rarely would. Most
people will vote for the person whose name is against the party they
want to support (even if different for each election), so little
consideration is required.
There has been only one referendum in which I was entitled to vote since
I turned 18 (1975 - should we stay in the EEC?). There are a very few
local referenda, e.g. for devolution in Scotland, but there's no reason
why these would coincide with elections.
--
David
ray o'hara
It's never taken me longer than 10 minutes to vote from when I enter
until I hand over the completd ballot.
What you see on TV is not the norm.
Sara Lorimer
> tony cooper wrote:
> >
> > The polls closed at 7:00 PM in Florida. However, the SofE in most
> > counties allow anyone in line at 7:00 PM to vote. In one Orange
> > County precinct the last person in line at 7:00 PM didn't get to vote
> > until almost 10:30 PM.
>
> Why on earth does it take so long? I've never had to wait more than 5-10
> minutes here. Of course, we have compulsory voting. There'd be riots if
> people had to wait for hours.
>
> So, are they deliberately trying to make it is difficult as possible? To
> test how badly people really want to vote?
It varies tremendously from polling station to polling station, and
especially from county to county. People in some places have to wait for
hours; in others, like mine, voters breeze in with no line at all.
The worst problem at my polling station (the basement of a Lutheran
church) was that there weren't enough desks, so some people were using
the piano to fill out their ballots on.
--
SML
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Here's a fact that will surprise some...Senator Joe Biden, our Vice
> President-elect, was on the ballot in Delaware and won re-election.
> He will, of course, resign his Senate seat and the Governor of
> Delaware will appoint a replacement.
Susan and I were trying to figure out whether he'd do it before or
after he's sworn in for another term. I believe that the
newly-elected (or reelected) senators are sworn in in the first week
in January, and he wouldn't be sworn in as vice president until the
20th.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Theories are not matters of fact,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |they are derived from observing
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |fact. If you don't have data, you
|don't get good theories. You get
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |theology instead.
(650)857-7572 | --John Lawler
Sara Lorimer
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2008 11:25:29 -0000, "John Dean"
> <john...@fraglineone.net> wrote:
>
> >But why, even so, does it take so long to even *get* to the station? People
> >were said to be queuing for up to four hours just to get through the door.
> >Is no-one outraged at this?
>
> I would say that most Americans, rather than being outraged, were
> proud of the lines and the waiting. The percentage of eligible people
> who register the vote has been dismally low in past years. The
> percentage of registered voters who actually vote has also been
> dismally low. Both of those numbers jumped up considerably this year.
> Voter apathy took a beating.
A friend of mine wrote a song about it (warning: profanity):
<http://music.metafilter.com/2662/Stay-The-Fuck-In-Line>
--
SML
Sara Lorimer
> Murray Arnow wrote:
> > This time I voted early. The early-voting locations accepted voters from
> > nearly every precinct. The delay to get to a voting machine was
> > significant. That is reason one.
>
> That contains a concept unfamiliar to the Brit voter. Your Polling
> Station (as they are called) is fixed as the one closest to your home.
> You can't vote anywhere else. The officers in the polling station have
> a printout of the Electoral Register for their own small constituency;
> if you're not on the list, you can't vote there.
It's only early voters who can go to other polling stations. In fact
they would have to, as most polling stations aren't set up before the
big day.
--
SML
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>R H Draney wrote:
There is an article in the print edition of The Times (of London) today that I
can't find online:
The ballot paper puzzle
Anyone wondering why it took Barack Obama fully 15 minutes - and his wife
even longer - to vote yesterday should look no farther than the ballot
paper they faced.
There were no fewer than 244 potential choices on the page and voting in
this case was by filling in the middle of a broken arrow, described as
Ballot Style 37.
....
Voters who do not have voter guides provided by parties or newspapers
often leave parts of their ballots blank or choose obscure candidates at
random.
....
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
CDB
>> [...]
>> [...]
Oh, Toronto. She probably had trouble spelling "X". (Clue for her:
it's like when "Y" does a "plié".)
(Hint for you: people are kidding you about your typo. But you
weren't the only one.)
Don Aitken
<usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com> wrote:
>I don't remember having to cast more than
>two votes. Three would be unusual and could only happen if General,
>County and District Elections coincided, which they rarely would. Most
>people will vote for the person whose name is against the party they
>want to support (even if different for each election), so little
>consideration is required.
>
The last Greater London election required people to cast three votes
(all of them using different electoral systems). One for Mayor, one
for constituency GLA member, and one for London-wide GLA member. If
such an election coincided with a parliamentary election (another
different sytem), that would make it four. I don't think borough
elections can coincide with Greater London ones, although they can
with parliamentary ones (it happened in 1979). In a borough election
(yet another different system) you vote for three or four candidates.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the From: address is not read.
To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com"
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Nov 5, 6:25 am, "John Dean" <john-d...@fraglineone.net> wrote:
>
>> Absolutely. We used to take our kids into the voting booth. I saw
>> pictures of McCain peering over Cindy's shoulder while she wielded
>> the stylus. Obviously to no avail. But why, even so, does it take
>> so long to even *get* to the station? People were said to be
>> queuing for up to four hours just to get through the door. Is
>> no-one outraged at this? Is there no movement to provide enough
>> stations / machines so people can get in and out within, say, half
>> an hour? Maybe you should go back to paper votes - over here it
>> typically takes less than five minutes to creep in, crap and creep
>> out again.
>
> It's never taken me longer than 10 minutes to vote from when I enter
> until I hand over the completd ballot. What you see on TV is not
> the norm.
I haven't done the math, but I would suspect that it's a simple
queueing theory problem. California precincts apparently tend to
serve about 750 registered voters. Most probably have between four
and eight booths. Since most people don't work near where they live,
most vote either before going to work or when they get home, with a
skew toward the beginning because it's more under your control.
If it took even three minutes on average, you could expect to process
a hundred people in an hour with five booths. If the arrival rate is
such that 150 show up in the first (or any other given) half hour,
some people are going to be waiting at least an hour.
Typically, it doesn't take anywhere near three minutes on average, but
as for why it does for many people, the simple answer is that there
are many elections run in parallel. (I realize that this is different
from the UK; your system seems weird to us, too.) My ballot had eight
separate elections (some for more than one winner), twelve state
propositions, and four local propositions. I believe that the San
Francisco ballot had 22 local propositions (and probably more
elections). This makes it common for even prepared voters to walk
into the booth not having really made up their minds on some issues.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |To find the end of Middle English,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |you discover the exact date and
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |time the Great Vowel Shift took
|place (the morning of May 5, 1450,
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |at some time between neenuh fiftehn
(650)857-7572 |and nahyn twenty-fahyv).
| Kevin Wald
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Chuck Riggs
wrote:
>Roland Hutchinson wrote:
>>John Kane wrote:
>>
>>> As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
>>> women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
>>> lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
>>> Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
>>> which had 200 seperate votes on it.
>>
>>They showed Senator Obama casting his votes live on TV earlier today. He
>>managed to whiz through the ballot in a mere twenty minutes or so (having
>>presumably come very well prepared), while the network newspeople wondered
>>aloud why it was taking so long. Now I know, thanks to AUE.
>>
>>I suppose this is the current manifestation of the Illinois (particularly
>>Cook County) tradition of "vote early and often".
>>
I've always heard that as "Vote early and vote often", sometimes
attributed to Al Capone.
<boocoo, snipped>
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs
Near Dublin, Ireland
Chuck Riggs
<ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:47:04 -0500, Roland Hutchinson
><my.sp...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>John Kane wrote:
>>
>>> As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
>>> women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
>>> lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
>>> Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
>>> which had 200 seperate votes on it.
>>
>>They showed Senator Obama casting his votes live on TV earlier today. He
>>managed to whiz through the ballot in a mere twenty minutes or so (having
>>presumably come very well prepared), while the network newspeople wondered
>>aloud why it was taking so long. Now I know, thanks to AUE.
>
>I noticed that Obama had his kids with him while he was casting his votes.
>They were, in principle, in a position to see what he was doing and thereby
>breach the secrecy of the voting. Is this normally allowed?
Although you're given the opportunity to keep your vote secret, there
is no requirement that you do so. You can blab to anyone or show your
ballot to anyone, as I understand ballots.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> Mark Brader:
>
> >> The way I heard it, one reason for the secret ballot
> >> was to make it impossible for anyone to sell their vote.
> >> This only works if you're *not allowed* to let anyone
> >> else see which way you actually voted. ...
>
> Richard Maurer:
>
> > Too bad that the election people are encouraging
> > vote-by-mail.
>
> Eek, I hadn't even thought about that implication. Voting by a
> method as unreliable as mail just seems so ludicrous in the first
> place. But at least you do get to use paper ballots that way.
One of my former students told me that when his employer was running
for city council, the employer's wife pretty much filled out the
student's mail-in ballot for him.
--
Jerry Friedman
tony cooper
<re...@comcast.net> wrote:
>On Nov 5, 8:50 am, tony cooper <tony_cooper...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, 5 Nov 2008 11:25:29 -0000, "John Dean"
>>
>> <john-d...@fraglineone.net> wrote:
>> >But why, even so, does it take so long to even *get* to the station? People
>> >were said to be queuing for up to four hours just to get through the door.
>> >Is no-one outraged at this?
>>
>> I would say that most Americans, rather than being outraged, were
>> proud of the lines and the waiting. The percentage of eligible people
>> who register the vote has been dismally low in past years. The
>> percentage of registered voters who actually vote has also been
>> dismally low. Both of those numbers jumped up considerably this year.
>> Voter apathy took a beating.
>>
>> We have trouble funding our schools in Florida. Other public services
>> have been curtailed by funding problems. We didn't divert state funds
>> into more voting space, personnel, and machines, and that caused
>> longer waiting time at the polls. A very sensible sacrifice.
>>
>> --
>> Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
>
>Look at who you elect there Republicans hate funding anything.
Who do you think we tried to vote *out*?
Ian Jackson
<chr...@eircom.net> writes
Or was it the Republicans (the other ones)?
--
Ian
tony cooper
<usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com> wrote:
The system you describe is the same as our system if you vote on
election day. However, early voting rules are different. Early
voters in this area could vote at any public library in the county in
which they were registered. They could also vote in the county
election office.
On election day, poll stations are fixed for each precinct. That
space is contracted for (rented) by the state, but only for that day.
The concept was that the larger spaces rented for election day were
needed for larger crowds, and early voters would trickle in at the
smaller spaces allocated by the libraries.
It didn't work that way. The turn-out was so large that the early
voting stations had long lines.
I wouldn't mark this off to poor planning, though. There was no sure
way to predict the turn-out, and there were costs to the early voting
program. This is not a time for the state to spend money that is
needed in other areas. While there were longer waits, the average
weight to vote was probably less than 30 minutes. That's not much of
a sacrifice.
>> Reason two is that more than federal offices are decided on. There are
>> local elections, initiatives, referenda, changes in constitutions and so
>> on, that often make their ways to the ballots. In areas where there are
>> major legal decisions, the changes are written on the ballot. Voters who
>> haven't paid attention prior to the election often make their decisions
>> on how to vote at this time. Well, reading this ballot takes time, and
>> some places have a long list of referenda; hence, long queues.
>
>And that is a big difference. I don't remember having to cast more than
>two votes. Three would be unusual and could only happen if General,
>County and District Elections coincided, which they rarely would. Most
>people will vote for the person whose name is against the party they
>want to support (even if different for each election), so little
>consideration is required.
>
>There has been only one referendum in which I was entitled to vote since
>I turned 18 (1975 - should we stay in the EEC?). There are a very few
>local referenda, e.g. for devolution in Scotland, but there's no reason
>why these would coincide with elections.
--
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
The Irish Republicans.
It is a memetic phrase, so is likely to be attributed to all sorts of people.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/classes/hmc.cs070.200401/votequote.html
Source of "Vote Early and Often"
The cynical phrases "Vote early -- and often" and "Vote early -- and vote
often" are variously attributed to three different Chicagoans: Al Capone,
the famous gangster; Richard J. Daley, mayor from 1955 to 1976; and
William Hale Thompson, mayor from 1915-1923 and 1931-1935. All three were
notorious for their corruption and their manipulation of the democratic
process. It is most likely that Thompson invented the phrase, and Capone
and Daley later repeated it.
Roland Hutchinson
> BrE filted:
>>
>>I noticed that Obama had his kids with him while he was casting his votes.
>>They were, in principle, in a position to see what he was doing and
>>thereby breach the secrecy of the voting. Is this normally allowed?
>
> It's actively encouraged, under the rubric of getting children interested
> in the democratic process...the point of the "secret ballot" is that
> you're not required to tell anyone how you vote, but if you *want* to
> share that information, particularly with a member of your own family,
> that's entirely up to you....r
Yup. There were one or two children in the line ahead of me who went into
the booth with the adults who brought them. I (vaguely) remember doing the
the same with my mother as a wee lad. I am told I then proceded to tell
everyone within earshot who she had voted for.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
Roland Hutchinson
> What's wrong with simply saying "odd occassions"?
"Civic occasions"?
Roland Hutchinson
We have only one voting machine where I vote. (I think they go for many
small polling places in this county; mine is within easy walking distance
of my house.) There were about ten people ahead of me when I arrived to
vote -- that was apparently during a lull; the workers said they had been
very busy all morning. Even with the lull, it was a longer line and a
longer wait than I had previously experienced here -- but nothing at all
compared to what some people had to put up with.
Fran Kemmish
I recall the explanation I read somewhere of the standard (UK) car
insurance phrase "social, domestic and pleasure": "social is when you
take your neighbour to hospital; "domestic" is when you take your wife
to hospital; and "pleasure" is when you take your mother-in-law to hospital.
Fran
Fran Kemmish
> We have trouble funding our schools in Florida. Other public services
> have been curtailed by funding problems. We didn't divert state funds
> into more voting space, personnel, and machines, and that caused
> longer waiting time at the polls. A very sensible sacrifice.
>
Easy for you to say: you didn't have to lose time at work to vote. These
long delays make voting expensive for those who do.
Fran
Roland Hutchinson
> I wouldn't mark this off to poor planning, though. There was no sure
> way to predict the turn-out, and there were costs to the early voting
> program. This is not a time for the state to spend money that is
> needed in other areas.
All good points.
> While there were longer waits, the average
> weight to vote was probably less than 30 minutes. That's not much of
> a sacrifice.
That's not _too_ bad as an average, but I'd want to know how many outliers
there were (say, waits of a hour or more) before judging how urgently
improvements to the system are needed.
Roland Hutchinson
> My ballot had eight
> separate elections (some for more than one winner), twelve state
> propositions, and four local propositions. I believe that the San
> Francisco ballot had 22 local propositions (and probably more
> elections). This makes it common for even prepared voters to walk
> into the booth not having really made up their minds on some issues.
We got off easy here: three or four offices (Pres/VP, senate, some county
stuff requiring votes for multiple candidates) -- for which it is easy
enough to just run your finger along the boxes on the party line -- and two
state referenda (which, unlike California, we only get for things already
approved by the legislature that require changes to the state constitution
and such-like).
Roland Hutchinson
> On Nov 4, 11:47 am, Roland Hutchinson <my.spamt...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> John Kane wrote:
>> > As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
>> > women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
>> > lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
>> > Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
>> > which had 200 seperate votes on it.
>>
>> They showed Senator Obama casting his votes live on TV earlier today. He
>> managed to whiz through the ballot in a mere twenty minutes or so (having
>> presumably come very well prepared), while the network newspeople
>> wondered aloud why it was taking so long. Now I know, thanks to AUE.
>>
>> I suppose this is the current manifestation of the Illinois (particularly
>> Cook County) tradition of "vote early and often".
>
> She did say that assuming Cook Country continued its long standing
> traditions, she expected her vote to be mulitplied by 15.
Convenient, isn't it? It gets even more convenient after you are dead;
someone else will fill out the ballots for you.
Mark Brader
>>> Calling voting and funerals social occasions, albeit odd social
>>> occasions, suggests a somewhat dreary life.
Nick Spalding:
>> What other word would you use? They certainly aren't business ones.
Murray Arnow:
> What's wrong with simply saying "odd occassions"?
If I answered that, I would risk running afoul of Skitt's Law. <grin>
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "Don't try this at work."
m...@vex.net -- Dennis Ritchie
Mark Brader
> http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/classes/hmc.cs070.200401/votequote.html
>
> Source of "Vote Early and Often"
>
> The cynical phrases "Vote early -- and often" and "Vote early -- and vote
> often" are variously attributed to three different Chicagoans: Al Capone,
> the famous gangster; Richard J. Daley, mayor from 1955 to 1976; and
> William Hale Thompson, mayor from 1915-1923 and 1931-1935. All three were
> notorious for their corruption and their manipulation of the democratic
> process. It is most likely that Thompson invented the phrase, and Capone
> and Daley later repeated it.
Curious. I would have thought it obvious that the phrase was invented
as a *parody* of the attitude of a supporter of political corruption.
--
Mark Brader | "...the scholarly instructor whisked his pupils through the
Toronto | entire universe in five months. Of course, the universe
m...@vex.net | was much smaller in those days." --John Franch
tony cooper
<ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
>It is a memetic phrase, so is likely to be attributed to all sorts of people.
>http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/classes/hmc.cs070.200401/votequote.html
>
> Source of "Vote Early and Often"
>
> The cynical phrases "Vote early -- and often" and "Vote early -- and vote
> often" are variously attributed to three different Chicagoans: Al Capone,
> the famous gangster; Richard J. Daley, mayor from 1955 to 1976; and
> William Hale Thompson, mayor from 1915-1923 and 1931-1935. All three were
> notorious for their corruption and their manipulation of the democratic
> process. It is most likely that Thompson invented the phrase, and Capone
> and Daley later repeated it.
I lived in Chicago, and the Chicago area, during Daley's regime. I
never thought of him as corrupt. Not personally. There was no
indication that Da Mayor personally benefitted from his position.
There was corruption in the system, there were corrupt politicians in
other offices, and Daley allowed - even aided - the corruption. But
to say that Daley was corrupt...no.
tony cooper
My wife works. Florida employers are required to give employees time
off to vote, but she voted after work. The polls were open until 7
PM. There's also the option of voting by mail.
tony cooper
<my.sp...@verizon.net> wrote:
>tony cooper wrote:
>
>> I wouldn't mark this off to poor planning, though. There was no sure
>> way to predict the turn-out, and there were costs to the early voting
>> program. This is not a time for the state to spend money that is
>> needed in other areas.
>
>All good points.
>
>> While there were longer waits, the average
>> weight to vote was probably less than 30 minutes. That's not much of
>> a sacrifice.
>
>That's not _too_ bad as an average, but I'd want to know how many outliers
>there were (say, waits of a hour or more) before judging how urgently
>improvements to the system are needed.
There were two areas with the longest lines. One in east Orange
County that is a precinct with a large footprint and traditionally
light voting. The other was on the campus of University of Central
Florida. Both had unexpectedly large turn-outs.
There were long waits in the precincts with a high percentage of black
voters. Again, the turn-out was much higher than anticipated.
Critics say the turn-out should have been anticipated because anyone
could figure out that an African American candidate would mean a high
turn-out, but there were few complaints from the actual voters. Many
commented that there was such a party atmosphere that the long waits
were enjoyable.
In the predictable areas - the traditionally heavily Republican areas
- the waits were short.
Fran Kemmish
My daughter works in DC, and told me that her employer expects people to
take vacation time to vote. That does not affect her, as she is not a
citizen, but did affect her colleagues.
I don't know what the legal position is in Massachusetts, but my husband
had several emails from his staff saying that they were in two and three
hour lines in Somerville and Cambridge. I drove past what would have
been our polling placce in South Boston later in the day, and there was
no line then, but perhaps there was early in the day before people
headed to work.
Fran
Nick Spalding
on Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:29:45 -0500:
I like it.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
John Dean
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2008 11:25:29 -0000, "John Dean"
> <john...@fraglineone.net> wrote:
>
>
>> But why, even so, does it take so long to even *get* to the station?
>> People were said to be queuing for up to four hours just to get
>> to provide enough stations / machines so people can get in and out
>> within, say, half an hour? Maybe you should go back to paper votes -
>> over here it typically takes less than five minutes to creep in,
>> crap and creep out again.
>
> in a list of probably less than half a dozen -- or, in local
> elections, a cross for the local council and another for the district.
> Leftpondians have to vote not just for the President but for all sorts
> of other people including judges, and maybe for specific propositions
> (as in a referendum here) as well. Could take hours (and clearly
> does).
So open more voting stations and allocate more machines and dispose of more
helpers. I'm not objecting to how long it takes to actually complete the
ballot, but how long it takes to get to the point where you have a ballot
before you to complete.
--
John Dean
Oxford
Robin Bignall
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 5 Nov 2008 23:09:51 +1100, "John Holmes" <see...@instead.com>
>wrote:
>
>>tony cooper wrote:
>>>
>>> The polls closed at 7:00 PM in Florida. However, the SofE in most
>>> counties allow anyone in line at 7:00 PM to vote. In one Orange
>>> County precinct the last person in line at 7:00 PM didn't get to vote
>>> until almost 10:30 PM.
>>
>>Why on earth does it take so long? I've never had to wait more than 5-10
>>minutes here. Of course, we have compulsory voting. There'd be riots if
>>people had to wait for hours.
>>
>>So, are they deliberately trying to make it is difficult as possible? To
>>test how badly people really want to vote?
>
>Quite the opposite. The number of registered voters increased
>dramatically and more eligible people voted. The poll station that I
>referred to above is on the campus of the University of Central
>Florida. More young people voted than was expected. Your compulsory
>voting system means that election officials can better predict how
>many people will vote.
>
>I voted early, almost two weeks before the election, and waited about
>35 minutes in line. Some early voters waited hours.
>
I think if there was a wait of hours in Britain, many would not
bother. In fact, if it's a rainy day, many don't bother. This is one
of the reasons why postal voting was adopted here.
>We are somewhat restricted in providing places to vote, so each
>location had to handle a large number of voters. Space must be
>contracted for well in advance, poll workers found and hired, and
>booths and machines provided. The election offices have a budget, and
>they can't buy an unlimited number of booths and machines.
>
>It's quite heartening that the young people who voted at UCF stayed in
>line even when it was quite clear the election had been decided.
I think it's awesome that you've elected a black president only some
forty-odd years after three civil rights protesters were murdered in
Mississippee. I don't see many black presidents or prime ministers in
Europe.
--
Robin
(BrE)
Herts, England
Garrett Wollman
Evan Kirshenbaum <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>tony cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> writes:
>> [Biden] will, of course, resign his Senate seat and the Governor of
>> Delaware will appoint a replacement.
>
>Susan and I were trying to figure out whether he'd do it before or
>after he's sworn in for another term.
The more interesting question, I think, is whether he'll do it before
or after the new governor of Delaware is sworn in. (That is to say,
does Ruth Minner owe him more favors than the governor-elect?)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
wol...@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness
Richard Bollard
<jrkr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Nov 4, 9:15 am, Ian Jackson
><ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In message <6nb2ieFkod7...@mid.individual.net>, John Dean
>> <john-d...@fraglineone.net> writes
>>
>> >Martin Ambuhl wrote:
>> >> Dixville Notch, NH has seen the error of its ways:
>>
>> >> 2000 Bosh 21 Gore 5
>> >> 2004 Bush 19 Kerry 6
>> >> 2008 McCain 6 Obama 15
>>
>> >Declining population or reducing turnout?
>>
>> Yes, I heard on the BBC World Service (at around 0400 UK time) that it
>> is a tradition for the burghers of Dixville Notch to wait for the stroke
>> of midnight, cast their votes, count them and then immediately declare
>> the results.
>>
>> I have to admit some surprise that it is permitted to allow the results
>> to be released before normal closing time (10pm in the UK). This could
>> influence the voting of those areas where the poling stations are still
>> open. Still, I suppose that the USA has a problem with having five time
>> zones. It would be difficult to synchronise voting times.
>
>I believe that voting is a state issue or even a county issue so each
>state or county presumably can do what it wants.
>
>In the last Canadian federal election, which was held last month, the
>opening and closing times for polls varied by province/time zone to
>partly deal with this problem. We have six time zones although
>Newfoundland is only 1/2 hour earler than Atlantic time.
>
>
>As an aside, I just was listening to a CBC program where one of the
>women on the panel has dual Canadian and US citizenship. She currently
>lives in Canada but voted in the US election--based in Cook County
>Illinois. She reported spending an hour and a half on the ballet
>which had 200 seperate votes on it.
>
Crikey!
I heard a reporter yesterday morning (my time) talking about the
length of voting queues being *only* a few hours wait. That made me
realise why Australia's compulsory voting seems such an imposition to
others. It should be noted that we provide polling booths all over the
place, generally only have one or two ballots and it only takes around
5 minutes to vote.
Maybe if you know, roughly, how many people are going to vote then you
can provide adequate facilties.
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT.
tony cooper
<john...@fraglineone.net> wrote:
I understand you are talking about the UK, but that's not an easy
solution in the US. In the US, in each county in each state there can
be different requirements for voting machines. Look at:
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080917/NEWS01/809170318/1006
To summarize, just two counties in New York are faced with a $3.6
million investment to upgrade their voting machines. In addition,
they will spend about $440,000 annually to store the machines between
elections and train the poll workers. (There are 62 counties in New
York)
In Florida, teachers are spending their own money to purchase school
supplies for their classes because the state can't/won't fund the
need.
As far as I'm concerned, voters can endure an hour's wait for a
once-a-year event (counting non-Presidental elections) if it means
that saving that hour will be detrimental to our education system. Or
any other public service, for that matter.
Richard Bollard
Lorimer) wrote:
>the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Murray Arnow wrote:
>
>> > This time I voted early. The early-voting locations accepted voters from
>> > nearly every precinct. The delay to get to a voting machine was
>> > significant. That is reason one.
>>
>> That contains a concept unfamiliar to the Brit voter. Your Polling
>> Station (as they are called) is fixed as the one closest to your home.
>> You can't vote anywhere else. The officers in the polling station have
>> a printout of the Electoral Register for their own small constituency;
>> if you're not on the list, you can't vote there.
>
>It's only early voters who can go to other polling stations. In fact
>they would have to, as most polling stations aren't set up before the
>big day.
I can vote at any polling station in my electorate. They all have a
copy of the electoral roll and my name is marked off. These marks are
pencil marks that look like they will be scanned by an optical reader.
For the recent ACT elections, the electoral officer (BTW, there were
about five of these in the booth, which speeds things up) who checked
my name was using a hand held electrick thingummy and a stylus. He was
much slower with this whizz bang technology than the old pencil and
paper people were.
Richard Bollard
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
[...]
>
>The concept was that the larger spaces rented for election day were
>needed for larger crowds, and early voters would trickle in at the
>smaller spaces allocated by the libraries.
>
>It didn't work that way. The turn-out was so large that the early
>voting stations had long lines.
>
>I wouldn't mark this off to poor planning, though. There was no sure
>way to predict the turn-out, and there were costs to the early voting
>program. This is not a time for the state to spend money that is
>needed in other areas. While there were longer waits, the average
>weight to vote was probably less than 30 minutes. That's not much of
>a sacrifice.
>
[...]
Australian polling stations are public buildings and as far as I know,
there is no charge for these. There are costs in running elections,
but paying rent is not one of them.
Roland Hutchinson
As he nearly said in '68: The mayor is not here to create corruption; the
mayor is here to maintain corruption.
tinwhistler
> On Nov 4, 8:55 am, "John Dean" <john-d...@fraglineone.net> wrote:
>
> > Martin Ambuhl wrote:
> > > Dixville Notch, NH has seen the error of its ways:
>
> > > 2000 Bosh 21 Gore 5
> > > 2004 Bush 19 Kerry 6
> > > 2008 McCain 6 Obama 15
>
> > Declining population or reducing turnout?
> > John Dean
> > Oxford
>
> The declining economy forcing layoffs at the Balsams Resort the
> main{only?} employer there.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Balsams_Grand_Resort_Hotel
Since that resort is owned by Delaware North Companies, Inc., it
becomes easier to understand why the Dems did better in Dixville Notch
this year -- Joe Biden is a sort of favorite son, no?
--
Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego
Raymond O'Hara
>
> - Show quoted text -
Jeremy Jacobs is a democrat? I always just pegged him for a greedy
absentee owner of the Boston Bruins who sold lousy concessions,
I will admit the quality of the concessions has gotten better but the
Bs still suck.
Fran Kemmish
> I think it's awesome that you've elected a black president only some
> forty-odd years after three civil rights protesters were murdered in
> Mississippee. I don't see many black presidents or prime ministers in
> Europe.
On the other hand, when Senator Obama becomes President Obama, there
will be no black Senators in the US Senate. There is only one black
State Governor: Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. I think there are about
40 black members of the House of Representatives.
I think the difference between the US and Europe is that there has been
a substantial population of African descent in the USA since its
founding, whereas in the UK, for instance, most of the black population
is descended from more recent immigrants.
How many MPs are black? That is the pool from which British Prime
Ministers is drawn.
Fran
Nick Spalding
on Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:48:09 +1100:
Here in the Irish Republic they are virtually all in primary schools
which are closed for the day, and the previous one to allow setting up
the booths.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>Murray Arnow wrote:
>> Richard Fontana wrote:
>>> John Dean sez:
>>>> But why, even so, does it take so long to even *get* to the station? People
>>>> were said to be queuing for up to four hours just to get through the door.
>>> Certainly that is not at all typical of past presidential elections, which
>>> have been characterized by much lower turnout and greater
>>> potential-electorate apathy. To some degree election bureaucrats
>>> anticipated the highter turnout this year and prepared for it; I'm
>>> impressed that there seem to have been relatively few election process
>>> problems.
>>>
>>> In past elections I've voted in, I don't recall any long lines, or hearing
>>> about long lines in other places. There was a fairly long line when I
>>> voted in the Democratic Party primary in Brooklyn (FLCIA) several months
>>> ago. I voted in a suburb of Bwahston yesterday at around 10:30am and
>>> the whole process was quite quick, but I would guess that a couple of
>>> hours earlier there must have been long lines. One issue is that Election
>>> Day is held on a Tuesday and is not a general public holiday, so many
>>> people try to vote before or after going to w*rk.
>>
>> There were two significant reasons for long lines. In well populated
>> communities, voters are directed to their home precincts to vote. Where
>> I live there is no congestion because of a smaller population density
>> than in other precincts, and the queuing is minimal.
>>
>> This time I voted early. The early-voting locations accepted voters from
>> nearly every precinct. The delay to get to a voting machine was
>> significant. That is reason one.
>
>That contains a concept unfamiliar to the Brit voter. Your Polling
>Station (as they are called) is fixed as the one closest to your home.
>You can't vote anywhere else. The officers in the polling station have
>a printout of the Electoral Register for their own small constituency;
>if you're not on the list, you can't vote there.
An additional point is that polling stations in the UK are open from 7am to
10pm. This means that no one needs to take time off work to vote.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
It is similar in Northern Ireland, although some secondary school buildings
have been used. The schools are publicly owned.
Amethyst Deceiver
@earthlink.net says...
I couldn't get over how early the polls close - in the UK, polling
closes at 10pm, having opened at 7am.
--
Linz
Wet Yorks via Cambridge, York, London and Watford
My accent may vary