Erik Reuter wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 05:50:14PM -0500, Jim Sharkey wrote:
>
> > My wife and I voted ealry today. One of the good things about voting
> > here in NJ is they still use the old lever-voting booths. We were
> > able to bring the kids into the booths with us and give them a little
> > taste of what it's about.
>
> No levers in Somerset county, New Jersey. They had a nice new "computer"
> in my district. It basicaly had a gigantic plasticized ballot with big
> buttons next to each name and little green LEDs behind the plastic. You
> hit the buttons you want causing the LEDs to light up next to the names
> you selected, then make a quick check for errors, then hit the "cast
> ballot" button. Pretty slick. I didn't see any ballot print out or
> anything; I guess it stored the data on the computer somewhere but I'm
> not sure.
Saying "I voted with method X because that's what my state does" appears
to be inaccurate. It's been my observation that ballot types vary from
county to county. Frex, Williamson County uses the paper ballots you
mark which later get scanned, while Travis County, at least for early
voting, was using electronic machines that didn't use paper ballots.
(They were using some sort of paper ballot today, though. I don't know
the details on it.)
As far as taking kids to vote:
1) We heard from Adam that he and his wife took their kids, and he had
one while she had the other, and they watched the voting. That's good,
IMO.
2) Sammy's at a really bad age for that sort of thing, so when *we*
went, I voted while Dan had Sammy (and the nearest early voting place
was at a rec center, so Sammy got to see some raquetball played), and
when I was done, I tracked them down and then Dan went and voted while I
was with Sammy, who bored of the raquetball but was interested in it
again after a short break.
3) My friends who live in Travis County and have a daughter 23 months
older than Sammy took her with them, and let her watch them vote with
the fully electronic systems. (May have been touch screens involved.)
I think it's cool that people are taking their kids to see how this
whole voting thing works.
Oh, and if anyone is curious about the counties I mentioned, Travis
County is the one that contains most of Austin, and Williamson County is
the one directly to the north.
Julia
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