I Voted
A surprisingly uneventful experience.
Since there were long lines at the start of early voting here in Fairfax County, Virginia, I was expecting the same on Election Day—which has never been the case for me since moving to Virginia eighteen years ago. But the whole process took maybe ten minutes. I was pleasantly surprised.
While I’m poking a bit of fun at the “Make a Plan to Vote” campaign, I’m fortunate to live in one of the more affluent communities in one of the most affluent counties in the country. It literally took longer to find the middle school where I was assigned to vote (and, oddly, was not where I voted in the March primary) than it did to wait for three people ahead of me in line to get a ballot, mark my ballot for the three races (US President, US Senate, US House) being contested, and read through the multiple ballot initiatives.
Fairfax County seems to do voting well, though. While I’m in a very white, very well-off small town as of last August, my old district was majority-minority, mostly Black and Hispanic, and the lines were just as short and the process just as seamless.
Similar experience, then we both live places where society still works.
I voted 2 weeks ago at a dropbox. It took 10 days to get confirmation that it had been received, when my wife and daughter who voted at the same time I did got their confirmation by the end of the week.
My wife and I just done did our civic duty as well. Uneventful again.
I voted on Friday in Arlington and it took five minutes tops. I have read numerous other comments from Arlington locals over the last couple of weeks who had similarly quick early voting experiences. That the lines were so consistently so long in nearby Fairfax was bothering me quite a bit, frankly. Both Arlington and Fairfax are more or less equally affluent areas that happen to adjoin one another. The wait times in one should not be so consistently and substantially worse than another.
Glad to hear that the actual election day waits were reasonable anyway.
I live in vote-by-mail Colorado and voted two weeks ago. We received our ballots by mail the day after they were handed over to the USPS. Returned them via drop box in the early afternoon a couple of days later. The day after that drop the county’s web site showed that they had been collected and the signatures verified (and if my county is following their standard practices, counted). Absolutely none of the bad things everyone’s been worrying happened.
OTOH, we’ve been doing this for years. I have seen a number of reports from states that are trying to scale up an old absentee ballot system about problems.
My family and I voted early in person and it was reasonable. Voting in Bexar County (San Antonio)got considerably easier two years ago when they modernized the voting process. We got new machines (with a paper trail). The machines are all linked so you can vote anywhere in the county (no more looking up your precinct and going to your assigned voting location). You can pull up your ballot at home, print and fill in your choices and take it with you to speed the process. All pretty painless.
I see James has voted Houndstooth Party.
It only took 10 minutes. I must admit pulling the lever for Biden was hard. But I just didn’t see any place to vote for the Communist Workers Party.
@Michael Reynolds: My homage to Bear Bryant. And the only truly comfortable mask I own—It’s lightweight, quite breathable, and has adjustable ear straps.
I should add, “Uneventful again, as expected.” We are too remote and far too few, for anyone to bother with. My lone fear of somebody messing with my foreign born, foreign sounding wife’s right to vote has never before materialized, and it hasn’t again. That doesn’t mean the fear has disappeared, anymore than the “Speak English, Dammit!” idiots have.
@James Joyner:
And no doubt totally useless against a virus. But the Bear Bryant thing is cool.
@Michael Reynolds: And acquired a beard. I’d say it looks good on you, James, but with the mask, who can tell.
@keef: The science behind masks is clear and essentially undisputed. The misconception seems to be that it has to be able to stop a microscopic virus from getting through. It doesn’t. It needs to be able to stop spittle, which carries the virus.
@James Joyner:
I explained that to keef/Drew/Theon months ago. For a man who claims to have a college education he’s rather thick.
Masks do two things. They vastly reduce the amount of virus carried by your exhalations, as well as severely reducing the distance a sneeze can travel. And they stop unconscious face-touching.
But there’s no fixing stupid.
Our youngest, Julia, born in Tongling, China where she’d never have had a vote, sent us a text of her ‘I voted’ sticker. Our eldest, Clara, could not have been kept away from the polls with a tank.
I give myself a B- as a father, but my two kids are compassionate, kind and aware of their duties as citizens. Got that much right at least. Money management not so much, but they’re both far ahead of where I was at their ages.
@James Joyner:
No its not. And the studies are all over the map. Spittle, yes. Very little spread that way. Vapor, not so much.
Its fascinating that the CDC sent out warnings that masks couldn’t stop (relatively speaking) bowling ball sized smoke particles from CA fires. But is effective against tiny viruses. That’s comedy gold.
As far as the practicalities. I wear a mask, not because i think its effective, but because its mandated and prevents social discord. But its a fool’s errand.
Voting is really easy in AZ once you are, like most voters, on the PEVL (Permanent early voting list, in effect vote-by-mail).
The ballots were supposedly mailed out on Oct. 7, I did not get mine until the 13th. Back in my mailbox for the mailman to pick up on the 14th. I checked the status online on the 22nd, mine had been signature verified and counted as of then.
@keef:
There are lots of observed data that say otherwise.
Voted October 23rd here in north Florida. Trumpers are going to have a bad week!
today it was 11:56 am before I read the stupidest thing I will read all day.
Today was an uneventful voting day for me. Dear Wife will cast her ballot on the way home from work this afternoon.
In the past-
2000 election day- Somebody kept calling to ask if I voted. I told them it was none of their business. On the third such call, the person threatened to have someone come to my h0use. Go right ahead, I will call the police.
2002- Dear Wife was pregnant with our son. After voting, she had an OB appointment and we went together. At the appointment, it was determined DW would need a cerclage done. It was done the same day and DW was sent home one day later and told to practice complete bedrest.
2010- Due to chemo, I threw up shortly after voting. In the parking lot.
Election day can be eventful. I prefer it not to be.
@keef:
The ultimate driver of the propaganda you believe is Trump’s psychological issues. Trump is squeamish about masks because he thinks they are germy, similar to his squeamishness about blood and bodily fluids. He thinks admitting this would make him look like a sissy, so he pretends going maskless is about something else, freedom or being macho or whatever.
@charon: I sometimes wonder if his aversion to masks is actually due to a much simpler reason…..his face makeup will rub off on it. It would be very visible around the edges, given the bright orange hue to it.
@gVOR08:
very professorial, James will need to update his profile pic.
Took me and my mother about an hour and half for our early voting last week and my sister a little over an hour yesterday. The line moved quickly and efficiently; I guess it was just the sheer amount of people that made it take so long and the social distancing making it stretch outside and around the library. It wouldn’t have been so bad except it’s cold and misting so everyone outside got unpleasantly damp. Good motivation to keep the line moving, though…..
Among many in the Cult 45 cult, the aversion to masks is the same as the aversion to lockdown, and to social distancing, to contact tracing, and other preventive measures: None of them, by itself, will stop the pandemic. So they are all, taken together, completely useless.
In fact, all of them taken together won’t stop the pandemic, but will greatly reduce the spread. It would make the difference between, say 12+ million cases and over 500,000 deaths, and under 5 million cases and 150,000 deaths, in some random big country.
Question for everyone- Will you be staying up all night to follow the returns?
Me- I will go to sleep like I normally do sometime between 9 and 10 eastern standard time because
1- Dear wife gets up at 5.
2- I don’t expect a winner till the wee hours of the morning or later.
So I won’t be playing Strat-O-Matic computer baseball all night with MSNBC on my television.
@keef: “No its not.”
An impressive retort.
@charon:
I believe that is the title of keef‘s daily to-do list.
@Bill:
I plan to half-follow developments on CNN while I do my usual web surfing of this site, what’s left of Facebook, and aviation sites. I usually half pay attention to Simpsons reruns or some other show on TV.
But only until bedtime (around 10-10:30 pm) or a bit past if something interesting is going on. I expect I’ll wake up tomorrow around 5:30-6:00 to better news.
@Bill:
It’s easier in Cali. Pacific Time. We’ll start getting returns at 4 PM.
@Michael Reynolds:
If we can get a dog fixed, I don’t see why we can’t get keef fixed.
@Steven L. Taylor: “An impressive retort.”
No it’s not.
Also voted in person. Stood in line about 45min on a gorgeous Florida morning that the Chamber of Commerce must have ordered. I actually like the civic ceremony. Looking around and reflecting that these folks might be voting for the wrong guy and be totally in thrall to stupid ideas but here we all are — neighbors.
Left me feeling much better. Now to nap and try to stay up until there’s some sort of resolution.
@Sleeping Dog: Done!
@Gustopher:
It’s a lot easier to cut a dog’s balls off than it is to cut a Trumpie’s stupid off.
@Gustopher:
Yes it is.
@James Joyner: At a glance, it puts me in the mind of John de Lancie.
@James Joyner:
I should get one of my gravatars too. What will be my image?
1- A picture of me. I think that would cause too many computer monitors to crack. The Frankenstein monster looks better than I do.
2- My cat? It isn’t original. My SB Nation image is of a cat I had from 1996-2006.
3- Dung Beetles? As much as I joke about writing that story I don’t want that on my tombstone one day. “Here lays the body of the dung beetle fiction author…..”
Can’t make up mind.
@James Joyner: That picture is a little fuzzy.
@Mikey:
@Gustopher:
Well, keef’s balls should be cut off, then at least there won’t be future stupidity propagated.
@James Joyner:
Welcome to the world of fuzzy faced
@keef: I find keef to be a fascinating case study in idea fixation. They* latch onto sound bites that seem to support their position, but never notice when they are discredited or contradicted by later evidence. Months or even years later, they are still parroting the debunked talking point. It’s as if, once they get the external affirmation they crave on a given topic, the part of their brain that weighs evidence just shuts off. That transaction is forever closed. It’s the same mechanism that leads to people who still believe that vaccination causes autism.
*Support singular ‘they’ as the gender-neutral pronoun of choice! Jane Austen would approve!
@keef:
Uhhhhh…..
@Kylopod: Why you botha?
Testing
@keef: I suspect there was no Communist Workers’ Party candidate this year. We didn’t have one in Washington and we have in the past. You could still have voted for the Socialism and Liberation Party ticket–La Rive and Freeman, or the Socialist Workers’ Party–Kennedy and Jarrett.
Better luck next time! 🙂 Next year, study the voter pamphlet and the ballot more carefully. Maybe fill out a sample at home and bring it with you. You can keep it in your pocket until you get to the booth if you don’t want your neighbors to see.
ETA: Darn! My thumbs up emoji didn’t take. I’m so sad now. I wanted to wish you good luck so much. 🙁
@Teve: Stupider than this?
@Teve: Of course, Mac aninny gets paid to say stupid things, so that might not count as heavily as saying stupid thing for free.
@Gustopher: Curious… it worked much better to respond to Dr. Taylor’s comment, than it did for keef a few comments back in the thread.
But in the wake of the NH midnight voting stunt, there’s good news for JKB–Yahoo’s front page is calling Trump as the leader based on the 26 counted votes so far. JKB must be smelling victory in the air; it’s only a matter of time now, with that commanding of a lead.
This just feels like the right thread for vote suppression…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/03/election-ballot-delays-usps/
USPS has decided that Court Orders are just advisory, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, since the Republicans are also pushing to require that a ballot must be received by election day, we can add this 300,000 to the Republican suppression numbers and attempted suppression numbers.
(So far, the Texas GOP has lost efforts to block 127,000 drive-in votes, on the technicality that the polling stations were housed in tents which are not permanent structures… but we now know of close to half a million legally cast votes they have tried to throw out)
@Gustopher:
It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Apparently the pre-set schedule that the USPS inspectors were already on would have everything swept by 8 PM today.
Of course he could just be a lying Trump weasel, but it sounds like the USPS wasn’t planning to let stuff pile up for days without getting delivered.
@keef:..And no doubt totally useless against a virus.
Much like yourself…
@DrDaveT:
8:00 means squat in my vote by mail state — ballots must be received by the county recorders by 7:00. OTOH, most of our counties have binding contracts with the USPS that require them to do sweeps late in the afternoon when it matters.