So yes, I was at the County Courthouse for four hours yesterday helping at the voting booths. My job was to hand people their correct ballot in its (ugly brown) plastic sleeve, and take it from them when they were done and then carefully slide the ballot out of the sleeve into the ballot box without looking. There was a lot of emphasis on the “WITHOUT LOOKING” part! We were NOT supposed to see what boxes were checked on any ballot. So it wasn't a big job or hard work at all, but I did learn a little bit about the voting process. There are a lot of rules! It was required that six people be there to help- there were four nice Grandma ladies and the precinct supervisor, who was a county employee. She mostly handed out the “I Voted!” stickers. We were in charge of eight precincts. I think we had somewhere around 700 ballots provided, and only 276 ballots were used. There was only one green vote all day, which is no surprise since we live in an agricultural county where the farmers think nothing of polluting the universe through hog barn waste and crop chemicals. There were no Nebraska party votes, and maybe a few less Non-partisan votes than Democratic votes. The majority of votes were Republican. Nebraska is a pretty Republican State.
I think people should be able to choose what ballot they want, whatever party they may officially belong to, and the smaller parties should be added to to the Dem. and Rep. Ballots, instead of being separate. There was hardly anyone to vote for on the smaller ballots because fewer people were running under those parties.
None of the ladies working with me knew why NE had a Democratic caucus besides being able to vote yesterday. It doesn't make sense to me why would they caucus and vote both?
After the polls closed at 8pm, we counted all the leftover ballots and only we were only one off. I left before the ladies figured out what happened to that one.
Four hours got to be a little long when there weren't many people coming in to vote, but I am glad I went. For one thing, it's good to get your name out as someone involved in politics. That way people know to contact you when they need help and then you can influence the political scene for the better, in little ways at least.
And on the way home, I stopped to see the sunset.
5 comments:
Emily,
You're going to make all your farming friends upset with your disparaging remarks! :o/
Mom
Do you ever wonder who will run the voting apparatus when our generation is old? It seems to me, the general feeling of political apathy and cynicism will make it unlikely that when our peers are old men and old women they will want to run voting booths.
I think we homeschoolers will be the ones running the voting booths. Hopefully.
If homeschooling is still legal by the time we're old, you might be on to something.
Homeschooling won't go with out a big fight. I would never consider teaching my (possible future)children in any other way than homeschooling, whether it is legal or not.
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