Cleveland Real Estate News

Once upon a time there was a Primary Election held all around the Country. Each State has their own rules, each Party has rules within those rules.  There are Super Delegates waiting to vote for us and to be honest, after hearing and reading about some of the things that went on in Ohio, I’m not sure this one man one vote thing was all it was cracked up to be this time…at least not in Cuyahoga County!

This is not a rant about why a candidate won and another one lost. It’s a tale of two people involved in the Election process. For this post I talked with Mick,  a young woman who lives in Mayfield Heights and trekked to her polling place to vote. When she arrived, they looked her name up in the book and the precinct judge announced ‘you are a registered Republican so here is your ballot.’  Nope, no mention of what ballot she wanted to cast.  She took the Judge as an official with authority and training and proceeded to vote.

Fast forward to a conversation Mick had with her brother David who was an Election Judge for a precinct in Brecksville.  In the course of a discussion with him, she said she really wasn’t sure who she wanted to vote for in all races and she was considering voting for one of the Democratic candidates – but when she got there they gave her a Republican ballot so that’s how she voted.  David asked her ‘didn’t they ask you what ballot you would like to cast today?’  She said ‘no.’  Some of us  would have questioned, asked if we had a choice. In this case, she relied on authority to do the right thing; and they did not.

The second half of this story is about Mick’s brother David, the precinct judge in Brecksville:

His overall impression: It was like going to Iraq and taking away all the sophisticated weaponry but leaving the troops and telling them ‘we brought you slingshots and rocks.’  (I had heard rocks and a chisel before but you get the idea).

He was told to ask everyone ‘what ballot would you like to cast today?’ And he did.  They (the Judges) had three hours worth of training and all Judges were trained in all areas, no matter what your responsibility was going to be at the poll.

David’s impression of training: Three hours to do it and by god, the person conducting the training was going to get it all in, questions from the soon to be judges? No time. He also said he felt as if the person giving the training was not someone used to trying to teach anyone anything; in fact he said she would get a zero on customer service in his book. There were so many rules upon rules and he felt that especially the new trainees looked a bit befuddled at times and questions did not get answered.

Speaking of questions: Per normal, things come up.  There were times when the presiding judge at his polling place did not have an answer to a question.  I said, so then the presiding judge calls the BOE yes? He said ‘oh yes, she called, numerous times.  The problem is, no one ever answered the  phone.’

Possibly interesting factoid (well it was to me lol) – There was an electronic voting machine at David’s polling place.  It was ostensibly for voters who had a handicap and needed to use it (he said visually impaired).  But in the training the judges were told that any voter request was a serious one and judges should do what they could to accommodate.  If someone requested curbside voting because they couldn’t get into the polling place, their precinct judges and the appropriate books and ballots went out to the curb to handle the situation.  And if someone without a handicap came to vote and said they were absolutely not going to vote with pen and paper they wanted to use the electronic machine, then the judges were to try to allow for that. Interesting no?

One of the judges kept saying ‘oh, that’s okay’ to voters who would come out of the booth and ask if they had filled in the circle enough.  David felt more than a few of them were only half filled in but the judge kept saying ‘that’s okay, put it in the box.’ 

David’s most important point: There were dozens upon dozens of reasons why a ballot could be invalidated because of  the system that was implemented (example: stubs or no stubs even after the rule changed, no half yellow sheet of paper to reconcile with voter book; and not filling in the circles enough for the vote to count).  David agreed with me that enough ballots should be printed to accommodate any voter from any party no matter what ballot they wanted to cast. But his main point was that we need electronic voting machines.

I appreciate Mick and David’s willingness to pass on their stories.  And I still say, can you spell disenfranchisement? I’m re-embedding a link to the PD story about the sharp, defensive response of the BOE worker to the Obama campaign’s complaint about voters being turned away or not voting and not enough ballots being printed. 

The bottom line is that voting is one of our sacred rights; Tim Ferris explains that point very well in his post about being embarrassed for Ohio. it should make us feel proud, and to some extent, no matter what goes wrong, most of us feel that way. We should not have to go through election after election with questions about accuracy and monitoring and disenfranchisement. Come on people, this is the 21st Century!  Peace out- 3C

update: this blog post on Blue Bexley discusses this issue in depth and covers a different area of Ohio. I found it on the Ohio Political Carnival. Please read the comments they are eye opening and sad and maddening all at the same time.