my voting venue

have fun democrats (and republicans)!

who's everybody voting for?

Subject: Re: my voting venue

ltjbukem wrote: i got my voting card and it happens to be at 19 grant square, bklyn. that's by dean and bedford/rogers.

i live on underhill and dean/bergen..i'm assuming everyone else in the immediate nabe is voting here too...kinda far...

can anyone confirm? is anyone else voting elsewhere?

http://www.elections.state.ny.us/portal/page?_pageid=35,1,35_8617&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

thanks,

I have the exact same direction - report to 19 Grant Sq, and I'm literally one block away from you. But my friend who lives at your cross streets gets to vote at the school right next to her. Go figure.

I haven't received a card yet...any one know who I can call to find out where I vote? (And also find out why I'm not receiving the info by mail)

EmmaViz wrote: I haven't received a card yet...any one know who I can call to find out where I vote? (And also find out why I'm not receiving the info by mail)

i think you can ask the brooklyn number listed on this page:

http://www.vote.nyc.ny.us/offices.html

if, for argument's sake, you WERE to show up at the school, and not at the location on your card, here's what happens: you'll fill out a paper ballot, which gets counted much like an absentee ballot does. it's not the most effective method, but it's meant for registered voters who went to the wrong polling location or were mistakenly not listed in their district's voting list at that location. they can't not let you vote.

i've moved around the nabe many times in the last 7 years, and have voted at the school on underhill for 6 of them. once i voted at the brooklyn museum (just by moving one block my location changed).

doctorj wrote: The intricacies of the mechanics of actually voting in the US never cease to amaze me. Designated poling places? On a week day? With clapped out machines, or worse, electronics? I'm used to a simple paper ballot, on a Saturday or any time in the weeks before, at the nearest open location anywhere in the country, or at an office in every major city in the world, where if they don't have the right ballot handy, they print it on the spot.

Ahh, the simplicity of Europe. Remember it fondly while you get used to politics NY style. How about polling places that open up with votes already recorded on the machines? Check. Voters that are sent downtown on election day to the courthouse to get a court order to compel election personnel to allow them to vote on their designated machine? Check. Petition challenges to dead voters signatures that appear on candidate’s petitions? Check. Board of Election employees that are functionally illiterate? Check. Oh, and lets not forget the voters that register under fraudulent names (Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck) or at fraudulent addresses (there are voters who listed their address as 26 Federal Plaza - home to the FBI, Customs, Secret Service).

The reality is that we aren't all that far removed from Tammany Hall and all the shenanigans that went on during that time. Sure you can vote on a paper ballot at any location, but in many cases, that’s as good as throwing your vote away. Absentee and paper ballots get counted LAST, and in some cases not until many days after the election. The machine votes are what really count and if the race isn't close after the machine vote, they often put off even looking at paper ballots for some time. Every paper ballot in the city is counted by hand by Board of Election employees with observers from the parties and campaigns watching, but unless its a statistical dead heat its often just done for show.

My dad used to tell me that if I was going to be a lawyer in NY go into election law. Its a highly specialized area and attorneys that know their stuff are in constant demand as they are always either trying to get a candidate thrown off the ballot or defending a legal challenge. Each party has a bunch of attorneys on retainer and each campaign from the judges and city council seats to the folks who are running for statewide and nationwide seats have at least one go to attorney on retainer.

ltjbukem wrote: went to my polling station this morning and the guy before me wasn't able to vote for democrats b/c the machine was set up for republican. after 10 minutes of fiddling, they asked us to fill out paper ballots.

when they went to look for the paper ballots, there were only republican paper ballots!! wtf??

the cop on duty called someone to come fix it, but i wonder how everyone else was able to vote that morning at 19 grant square.

did anyone else go there and have anything to report back?

this was at 6:45am, btw. so basically, we both left without having been able to vote..

That sucks! Can you go back tonight?
The guy at my polling station asked if I was Republican (that's something that's never happened to me before) but I got the feeling it was because he wanted to try something out - flip that switch or whatever. I laughed at him because my nabe voted 98% Dem in the last election.

The booths of course have both primaries set up. I didn't try to pull any of the Repub levers, so I don't know if those are locked down if you've chosen Dem...

ltjbukem wrote: were you in the 54th election district? that's the one closest to the door that you walked in. that was the one that was 'broken' ... so apparently they fixed it?

No, I'm in a different district, and a different polling station.

I had to leave. my district always has the longest line and people are, frankly, fucking stupid and take half an hour to flip a few switches. doubt I'll get back there tonight. oh well. it's not like I am particularly invested in who wins the dem primary, thank god. I'll just be sure to leave an hour for voting come november - if it goes quick, I'll treat myself to breakfast at tom's.

i voted at the school on st. marks and classon at 6:30am...not surprisingly, i was the only one there.

didn't have any issues though.

ltjbukem wrote: went to my polling station this morning and the guy before me wasn't able to vote for democrats b/c the machine was set up for republican. after 10 minutes of fiddling, they asked us to fill out paper ballots.

when they went to look for the paper ballots, there were only republican paper ballots!! wtf??

the cop on duty called someone to come fix it, but i wonder how everyone else was able to vote that morning at 19 grant square.

did anyone else go there and have anything to report back?

this was at 6:45am, btw. so basically, we both left without having been able to vote..

By 9am when I went to vote at this location, all seemed to be running smoothly. Be sure to go back sometime before 9pm!

Okay, so here's how it works...

How Does the Presidential Primary Nominating for Democrats Work in New York?:
151 of the total 281 delegates are elected proportionally by congressional district. Another 45 delegates are chosen by party leaders, and the remainder are chosen by a state Democratic committee meeting in May. (That's 151 that voters chose and 130 selected by the party.)
Democrats vote for presidential candidates, and also for delegates and alternate delegates who have pledged to support specific candidates. In many parts of Queens (and New York City and state) you'll see choices only for delegates supporting Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but you still have a chance to vote for all the presidential candidates.

How Does the Presidential Primary Nominating for Republicans Work in New York?:
It's a winner-take-all contest. Based on the state-wide primary results, the candidate with the most votes gets 87 of New York's 101 delegates. The remaining 14 delegates are selected by party leaders.
The Republican delegates and alternates will not appear on the ballot, only the names of the Presidential Candidates.

Interesting to me that the Republican delegates get to remain relatively anonymous while every voter knows exactly which candidate the democratic delegates are supporting.

http://queens.about.com/od/governmentcity/p/pres-primary-ny.htm

About those messed up machines jammed on Republican -- there's an item in the NYT blog about it

February 5, 2008, 12:54 pm
Scattered Voting Problems Are Reported
By Sewell Chan

. . . a spokesman for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in New York, reported that similar mechanical problems with voting machines had been reported to the campaign by voters in polling places in several Brooklyn neighborhoods, including Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene, East New York and East Flatbush.

Asked about the problems in Brooklyn, Ms. Vazquez-Rivera replied: “We have been informed of these machine malfunctions. A team has been dispatched to look into the matter. To our understanding, it is possible that the poll workers, when they stood up the machines, didn’t align everything properly.”

PS9 at 1pm was smooth sailing.