democracy hangs by a thread
Posted: November 4, 2012 Filed under: history, pearls of wisdom | Tags: board of elections, BOE, democrat, election, hanging chads, history, my history, pearl of wisdom, president, republican, voter fraud, voting 29 CommentsI was a consultant for a board of elections for a major metropolitan area for a few years. What a colorful place, where they worked hard to ensure your vote was counted accurately.
The BOE ( Board Of Elections ) is a political organization from the get go. If the head is a republican, the second in command must be a democrat. It goes almost all they way down the channel that way, so neither one side of the other has an advantage. However, most of the staff are political appointees, and are next to impossible to fire without offending some councilman or ward leader so strange things can happen.
Here are some things that BOE workers had to deal with in order to keep the election honest ( which they tried their best to do ):
Ballots
Forget about hanging chads or butterfly ballots being part of some plot to rig the election, each design is approved by both sides of the political parties. They both check and sign off on it. So if the ballot isn’t clear, most likely the political appointees on both sides failed to do their due diligence.
Vote Early, Vote Often
Before we installed the computerized system, a person could register in two places saying they had moved, and then vote in both. Catching them from the paperwork was very hard and time consuming, so it was often done. Some people would get an absentee ballot and vote at the poll on election day. Hard to think this was an innocent error.
Dead People
Let me assure you, dead people don’t vote, even on Halloween. But somehow ballots from them sometimes appeared. One thing the system we were installing did was to track signatures and detect fraud.
Nursing Homes
It was odd to discover that volunteers would go to nursing homes and register voters and then help them fill out their absentee ballots. Then amazing to discover that these ballots were almost all identical, even the people in a coma seemed to have strong political leanings.
Absentee
The general opinion was be close in the traditional ballot, win the absentee ballot. I prefer absentee ballot now, as it gives me time to consider each candidate and issue before deciding, and ensures if a computer issue comes up, my vote will still be cast.
I am a Canadian, and like most are watching the American election carefully.
thanks for taking an interest. Politics is the best and worst of any society
Understood! Also, the USA is an important friend of Canada.
one would think there is an election or something…
is the act of electing an electrocution?
yes, and you elect an electrician, hot stuff.
Although we did have a few plumbers, come to think.
ahaha!
thanks for sharing your elections department experiences. Interesting stuff from politically opposing parties and appointees how to track votes. Thanks.
thanks for reading.
I didn’t say that I read t
I didn’t even say that I could read!
I’m for voter ID as voting is one of the highest responsibilities we have. You have to show ID for all sorts of daily things such as getting a driver’s license, getting food stamps, and so forth. Why not to vote?
It won’t be long and your fingerprints or eye scans or something will be what allows one to vote!
Does that seem odd to you ?
no actually, would feel invasive at first but we’d get used it and just follow the plan like sheep like we always do… 🙂 i.e., security cameras, body scanners, etc….
I rankle at many of those, and the loss of privacy and restrictions the government places on us, but I am ok with proof id ID for voting.
it’ll come…maybe facial recognition…that could be used at airports too!
a friend who is a high exec with an airlines mentioned to me that it is already there. When you go through customs and they say remain behind the red line, they are scanning your features.
hmmmmm we should all look down!
I have always been amazed that you have to register to vote. Here in Sweden you are getting a permission automatically to vote exactly once… But that requires of course that the government know exactly were you live. What you said about nursing homes has happened a few times.
I think because we are so mobile, and many of the elections are taxes that support localities that they need to ensure people are voting in the proper places.
Never thought of those issues before. I’m sure some of those things happen in Aussie too. I think that the US is far more passionate about voting but I think perhaps you have better candidates to work with!!! I feel quite despondant about our lot 😦
When you vote, you can really give them the “what for” with a clean conscience!
Hope you are well.
It’s nice to have something to vote for though!
yes, sometimes we are left with voting against the worst candidate.
Perhaps you could start a new political party ?
Spitting my drink…so not political.
you could start the “Horse” party, with the slogan “We’re ahead, and our opponent is the horses a$$”
Haha That’s perfect! You make me laugh Bill. xx
laughter is good!
not sure if you like poetry, but I put up a couple poems at my bwfiction.wordpress.com site.