I am happy to report that brains prevailed again here in 12-1. I took my wife to vote, and we agreed there was NO WAY she could try to stand in that long line for 40 minutes. So, she took a prinout of Phyllis Kahn's message that said the disabled could sit down to vote and get a ballot brought to her. The judges at first pointed at the line, but we persevered and they did bring her a ballot. She got a folding chair and used the stage as a writing table. The total thing including travel to the precinct was done in half an hour. Much more reasonable. The ballot machine did seize up while she was marking her ballot, causing the process to back up there. But by the time she was done, she was able to march down and get her ballot counted. While she was busy doing that, I was heading people off from standing in line without their ballot receipt. People thanked me for saving them from standing in the line uselessly.
Another couple of improvements over my experience: (1) One lady was doing the WHOLE job of numbering the ballot receipts. She was doing nothing else. Another, younger, woman was handing out the ballots and explaining the supplemental ballot (I'm SO glad I don't live in Florida). She was instructing about ten people at a time, rather than one at a time as was happening in the morning. I still think they didn't quite get the idea. People were standing doing NOTHING for 20 minute or so. Someone could have easily explained it all to them before they got there to pick up their ballot. I hope someone gets to the person who oversees all this to make it work better in the future. We have a couple more important elections coming up, and there's no excuse for doing it inefficiently. Voters are king in a democracy, they are not experimental dogs. Anyway, I had Nov. 5 off from work, arrranged it some time back. And now I know why. I had to do the trial run for my wife so she could cast her vote without going through unnecessary suffering. I didn't know it, but my marital duty was all decided for me. It would have been futile to try to do my work shift today and try to do my duty as a citizen, too. I sympathize for the people who came in stressed from the office and then had to go through this. Jim Mork Ward 12 Precinct 1 Cooper Neighborhood __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search new jobs daily now http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@;mnforum.org Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
