Stories From the Voting Front

By Scott Smith in News on Nov 7, 2006 4:38PM

So far, the voting experiences of those in the Chicagoist offices range from easy as pie to frustrating as hell.

Some of us breezed right through this morning with short wait times and smart, competent election judges. But one writer said everyone at her polling place had his or her voting status challenged. One of our weekend writers said she ended up on the business end of a voting machine programmed for the wrong precinct, so she queued up for a long wait at an electronic machine. And a few Chicagoist writers found themselves voting Republican for the very first time (if locusts descend from the skies, that’s probably why).

Outside of the races themselves, voting today was kind of exciting. First, dig that crazy new ballot. Punching holes is so 2004. Now, you’re asked to color in little arrows. We forgot how much we missed the simple joys of grade school, though keeping track of which judges got our "no" votes started to make us dizzy.

Also, could that thing be any longer? It was like carrying around a copy of Santa’s naughty list. Our anal-retentiveness was working overtime because the ballot was longer than our booth and we were worrying about folding, spindling or mutilating our precious link to democracy.

Then there are those non-binding referendums. We love the wording on the assault weapons ban vote that essentially says “Do you or do you not want tiny little babies to get shot?” After reading an article in The Economist last week, we voted for the statewide minimum wage hike since it won’t hurt small businesses (even though we know the EITC is a better bet to reduce poverty). As for our votes on pulling out of Iraq, we’ll keep those to ourselves.

So tell us: How was your voting experience this morning? How long was your wait? Was your registration challeneged? What’d you think of that new ballot? Are you planning on voting tonight instead? Are you coming to our returns watching party at the Daily Bar and Grill?

Looking for voting resources? Check out our post here.