Voting 2011<\/p>\n
My voting experience was so humiliating and frustrating\u00a0 using the handicapped accessible voting machine last year, that I seriously debated whether or not I should even show up.\u00a0 I lost sleep over my dilemma.<\/p>\n
By morning, I was confident that I, at least,\u00a0 knew what I was doing.\u00a0 I\u2019d studied the guidelines and discussions I\u2019d had with Susan Cohen last year. It was time for a follow-up session to master the art of voting with the Image Cast Ballot Marking Device<\/strong>\u00a0 (accessible voting machine).<\/p>\n I confidently marched in next to my guide dog and my husband.\u00a0 I had printed out the guidelines and had brought a\u00a0 tray with a soft pillow attached to the bottom.\u00a0 Last year, the key pad kept slipping off my lap and this was one of the things I\u2019d noted to be sure to bring.\u00a0 I signed my own name in the correct box to register and asked if my psw (Poll Site Worker)\u00a0 was available to assist me.\u00a0 She and another PSW were at my station, readying the machine for me.\u00a0 They had the monitor turned off.\u00a0 The first \u201chead-set\u201d they handed me turned out to be to large, left and right push buttons to be held in the voter\u2019s hands.\u00a0 I calmly suggested that if I had to hold these up to my ears, I\u2019d have no hands to operate the key pad.\u00a0 The appropriate head-set was located and the guide\u2019s synthesized voice flowed into my ears, enabling my fingers to operate the key pad. First barrier cleared.<\/p>\n The PSW noticed that the ballot in my privacy sleeve was printed on.\u00a0 She took it back to the registration table and got a plain piece of paper.\u00a0 Once my ballot is finalized, the whole ballot would be printed out.\u00a0 Second barrier cleared.<\/p>\n The guide\u2019s voice narrated me patiently through the entire ballot with clear, albeit, hesitancy, until I\u00a0 pressed the \u201cballot\u00a0 complete\u201d.\u00a0 Third barrier cleared.<\/p>\n The guide\u2019s voice informed me to:\u00a0 Poll Worker Assistance is needed for the printer\u201d.\u00a0 The fourth barrier stopped us in our tracks.\u00a0 They phoned the County Election Office and was told to turn on the monitor.\u00a0 I suggested that that would show my ballot and cancel the privacy issue.\u00a0 There were several buttons (a green and a yellow) in front of me, but the PSWs admitted they didn\u2019t know what they were for or how to get the printer to do it\u2019s thing. Pushing the green button did not make it go.<\/p>\n Another call was put into the County.\u00a0 After the first call, before I began voting, the \u201cvoting Machine Guru\u201d got in his car and was on his way to our polling station.\u00a0 It\u00a0 occurred to me that I should make a date with him to meet at 6:00 AM next year to avoid the wait.<\/p>\n After a short discussion, he pulled up the printer top and extracted the crumpled up ballot.\u00a0 There were only a few squiggly lines on it.\u00a0 The PSW deposited it in the \u201cdamaged ballot box\u201d\u00a0 and got another piece of paper, inserted it, and hoped.\u00a0 Meanwhile, I\u2019m holding the privacy sleeve up to the slot where the printed ballot should come out.\u00a0 The top of the sleeve was on top of the slot and the bottom of the sleeve was under the bottom edge of the slot.\u00a0 The idea is for the printer to spit the completed ballot into the privacy sleeve privately.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We could hear the printer grab the paper and print, but no paper came sneaking into my privacy sleeve.\u00a0 Off came the top of the printer.\u00a0 One edge of the paper had caught in such a way as to print correctly, but scrunch up, instead of coming out.\u00a0 The guru\u00a0 snatched the ballot out of the jam and popped it into my \u201cpublic receptacle\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Oh well, the fifth barrier was sort of cleared.<\/p>\n I was escorted around to the slot on the other side, where everyone inserts their ballot.\u00a0 My PSW lined me up, told me where to put my hands, and I slid my ballot in.\u00a0 The machine sucked it in and kept it.\u00a0 I promptly had a rush of exhilaration, as all the Polling Station Workers gave a huge\u00a0\u00a0 sigh of relief.\u00a0 I think we all let go of the breath\u00a0 we didn\u2019t know we were holding.\u00a0 Sixth barrier cleared.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s voting experience was definitely better than last year\u2019s.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking forward to an even better experience in 2012 for the National Presidential Election.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Voting 2011 My voting experience was so humiliating and frustrating\u00a0 using the handicapped accessible voting machine last year, that I seriously debated whether or not I should even show up.\u00a0 I lost sleep over my dilemma. By morning, I was confident that I, at least,\u00a0 knew what I was doing.\u00a0 I\u2019d studied the guidelines and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":476,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}