The machines are crap.
The system is crap.
The commissioner must be crap.
I tried to vote today. I took my large paper ballot in its privacy "envelope" to a stand, which anyone nearby can look into. I took out the ballot, picked up the pen, with its crayon level of precision, and filled in the circles of some candidates and wrote names in the "write in" space for people not on the ballot. I'm now guessing that the "write in" stuff is what caused my ballot to reject over six times. The "write in" area is about the size of a postage stamp. It would be difficult to fit the name John Adams in that space without going outside the lines. Forget about writing in George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
After the first set of rejections I took my ballot back to the exposed area and filled in the circles more carefully. But the next round of submissions also failed. The error message was never specific in any way.
I had enough. Workers implored me to continue trying but I left saying that the system is ridiculous, which it is. I' guessing that other states have similar problems and that none have properly computerized elections as we have done with just about everything else.
We Americans should be ashamed. We had a scandalously bad presidential election process in 2000 but have not even come close to improving the system. We give elections our lowest priority then we complain about our elected representatives. We should look in the mirror to see who is really at fault.
Sent to info@elections.ny.gov and boe-west@westchestergov.com
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