It’s Primary Day here in New York State, and I’m in a bit of a quandary as to whether I want to bother with it, but I suppose I will. It’s a good opportunity to how many of the old people manning the polls croaked since last November, and if nothing else, I want to get some practice on the new ImageCast ballot-scanning voting machines. It’s the first election of any sort for me (ever) without my good old friends the lever machines (which were good enough for my parents, damn it), and since I doubt there’ll be much of a line, it’s a good opportunity to get acquainted with the new system. Not that it should exactly be difficult, but, as we all know, change is bad. I’m not sure these things even give you a chance to verify your selections. You mark the ballot, and then stick it in the shredder scanner, and off you go. Not that you could tell anything was happening with the lever machines, of course, but it felt like you were voting when you slammed that big old stick back and the curtains snapped open. Now I guess you go to a table with a urinal privacy screen around it and mark your ballot with a “special” pen (hint: it’s a Sharpie).
As far as who to vote for, there aren’t many exciting races. Though I don’t really feel like a “Democrat”, I’m registered as one (you have to register one way or another here in order to get a voice here in NY), so I’ll have to vote in the Democratic primary, and there aren’t really many interesting races. Katrina vanden Heuvel seems to feel entitled to tell me who to vote for AG. No offense, Katrina, but I don’t recall asking for your opinion. The Working Families Party seems to concur, though, so I reckon I’ll vote for her candidate anyway – Eric Schneiderman. Since my vote is typically the kiss of death, I reckon that means he’ll lose, plus Kathleen Rice seems to be the one with all the money and the teevee commercials. I honestly don’t know much about either one (except that Kathleen is a nice Irish-Catholic girl – single with no kids, though, so you know what that means – who went to Catholic University, and, for all I know, may very well have lived in the same dorm room I spent my DC summer from hell in, back in ’06), though that I’m guessing that I could count the number of times either one of them have been north of Westchester on one hand, and odds are they think the most prevalent crime in Upstate NY is cattle rustling.
There’s no option in the Governor’s race, as Andy Cuomo has that locked up. It’s unfortunate, because I don’t like him, and I think he’ll be very bad for public employees and organized labor. Not as bad as either of the Republicans running, though. That’s a close race, and it’ll be interesting to see which one of them wins (Loser Lazio vs. the mope from Buffalo, Carl Paladino). At any rate, come November, I’ll be voting for perpetual Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins.
Oh well, I guess I better go study my ballot options (which, of course, is code for “shop for tractor implements”).
The nice thing about the Democratic primary in NYC is that the winner is, in almost all cases, the winner of the general election. So, I always vote in the primary ’cause that is where the election is determined.
I too will vote for Eric because he is the most liberal one running for AG. I’m going to miss those old lever machines. I’ve never used any other kind so this is gonna be a first.
Well, I’ve done my civic duty and voted. May I express my apologies and condolences to all (four) of those I voted for.
I was Democrat #3 at my polling place, and I must say the new voting system was, well, somewhat anticlimactic. Fill out the little circles, shove it in the machine, and that’s that.
Nowhere near as satisfying as pulling that lever.
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Hubby and I voted, too. The polling place people were thoroughly confused and made quite a hash of things. One woman had to run after some voters because she had forgotten to make them sign the book. Filling in the blanks was easy but the scanner did not conform the people for whom I had voted so I may have cast a vote for George Bush. I am not a great fan of this new method of voting. It doesn’t seem to be a great improvement. Now how would you say that in Klingon?
Sounds like NYC had all kinds of problems voting.
That is not good news. NYC is a large pool of liberal voters.
Pedro Espada has made his concession speech. :banana: :banana:
Numbers from NYC are coming in very slowly. The news critters say this is very unusual. Looks as if the new fangled machines have done pretty poorly.
MSNBC says Paladino wins per AP. :omg: