I would like to offer the following challenge to everyone,
Make use of the opportunity to Vote Early (starts Monday)!!!,
So that, hopefully, this becomes a permanent option in Massachusetts. I wished for this in a post on this site back in October 2013. If I had known that my wish would come true, I would have been far more selfish with my wish!
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Please let this be an Open Thread on Early Voting.
Please share widely!
Was one of the first in my town.
It had dwindled considerably by the time I left though.
At Salem City Hall. That will be the earliest I can do it, but I appreciate we did this. Someday we can have universal mail in voting or online voting, but for now I will take this window of opportunity. My wife will be early voting this week as well in Illinois, though folks have been a little distracted out here this week 😉
We are tentatively planning to return home mid-week. With any luck, I’ll be able to vote on Thursday.
and was in and out in 10 minutes.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Got to Maynard Town Hall at 8:10am, and 3 people had already voted in the first 10 minutes! Impressive for such a small town. 🙂
In Franklin. There were no lines, but the place was busy and there was steady traffic while I was there. The voting area was always filled.
As to what data will be available for the tea leaf readers who will try to find out what the early voting did, who it helped and who it did not help.
As to what data will be available for the tea leaf readers who will try to find out what the early voting did, who it helped and who it did not help.
…and demographic observations will give some idea, but I’m pretty sure the ballots are not actually counted until Election Day.
The ballot goes into an envelope, just like an absentee ballot. It isn’t run through an OCR reader.
To further the question: Is the data on who early-voted released before the election? If so, how/when?
Lowell has rotating polling locations and that is the day a school in my neighborhood will be open for voting.
I’ve heard from a surprising number of people who feel that voting on Election Day itself makes them part of the process and ritual in a way early voting does not. Therefore, they will wait, but not because they haven’t made up their minds yet.
In what way?
…would appreciate more opportunities and the convenience and given how anemic civic engagement sometimes is I was not expecting people to feel an emotional attachment to “the day”.
We voted this evening in Lowell at our regular polling place. It did not seem to be the same crew that usually works regular election days. We gave our names at the “check-in” table and a computer spit out a label which was adhered to an envelope. We marked our ballots at the booth and then sealed them in the envelope which we signed. The envelopes were then put in an open plastic tub underneath the “check-out” table. I am going to call city hall to find out when and where they are counted. Are they treated like absentee ballots?
My head tells me to vote early. It’s the rational thing to do. My heart wants me to wait until Nov 8, because it’s just plain more fun.
Maybe this is an awful way to look at it, but I think “what if something happens between now and election day that makes it impossible for me to vote?” Get ‘er done while the gettin’ is good.
“What if something happens between now and Election Day that makes it impossible for me to vote for the candidate for whom I intended to vote?”
“What if the destruction of one of our last remaining civic rituals proves the tipping point into a world where we are all reduced to anomic monads floating in a Facebook-monetized sea, bowling alone into nihilistic Trumpism?”
(*I don’t really think that.)
When birthday cards arrive in the mail, I could open them right away. After all, why not absorb the well wishes into my soul on the off chance that I get hit by a bus between when I just got the mail and my birthday three days later.
Yet I wait until my birthday. For me, there’s something to the tradition of doing certain things, certain ways, on certain days. Again, I’m not arguing it’s rational.
the point of the challenge is to run up the numbers on how many people early voted in Massachusetts so that the powers that be do not look at the final numbers and decide that it was not worth the time and effort to offer Early Voting, but instead, come to the conclusion that Early Voting is good for the election process as it encourages voter participation in a Country and a State with very abysmal voter participation rates. It also enfranchises some people for whom a Tuesday vote during working hours is extremely difficult.
Really impressed with this group of volunteers. They are diamonds in the rough, too many youth and far too many youth of color are politically tuned out. But these folks are working the polls Nov for campaigns or as poll workers and have to vote early. Which is awesome.
And there at town hall was the lady who would have checked me in at the regular polling place!
It seemed to go well enough. The worst part was that Stephen Lynch had a Republican challenger, so I had to fumble with the 2 page ballot and the envelope in order to hold my nose while voting for him, because it was to difficult to do a write in.
Otherwise, I voted Clinton, then No, No, Si and Si. And I made a point of taking a moment to whisper my Mother’s name, because she never got the opportunity to vote for a woman.
I didn’t like it, but I did it. I’m sure I’ll feel a little frowny on November 8.
Sometimes you’ve got to eat your peas I suppose.
Third in the queue at Salem City Hall, no line. In and out of the building in under 10 minutes. The leftover Halloween candy was a nice touch 🙂
🙂
First time I’ve ever had to wait in line, even to the point that I left on the first try and came back later.