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It took three hours. I left my house at 9:24am, and walked out of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (Cleveland, Ohio) at 12:10pm. And guess who was waiting for me when I got out? D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. Nice guy walking the line, talking about the Bruce Springsteen concert with Barack Obama tomorrow in downtown Cleveland. I won’t be there but I bet it will be jammed.
I took a lot of video and will post later. Bottom line: great experience, my hips hurt like hell from bursitis and leftover inflammation from my herniated disk. You have got to be healthy to be walking in a line for more than two hours. People were fantastic. Looked to be about 80-90% African-American. Other candidates hang around: lots of judicial candidates – for Ohio Supreme Court, Probate Court, State Board of Education.
The ballot itself is way long and my town’s referendum issue was impossible to vote for because it had no description whatsoever.
And yes, I voted for Obama. It felt great.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:58 pm November 1st, 2008 in Barack Obama, Ohio, Pepper Pike, Politics, Voting, WH2008
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3 Responses to “First-person rendition of early voting in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Part I”
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If you people had Oregon’s vote by mail, your local issues would have been included and you could have sat at your kitchen table and filled it out at your leisure and either mailed it or dropped it in a drop box, probably at curb side. But then you aren’t in Oregon and got to spend 3 hours on civic duty.
You also would have had a State voter’s guide with pros and cons supporters and the language and explaination to use on your issures, right at your elbow. A further good point about OR VBM is that Republicans hate it and with no actual evidence.
Hi Chuck – you can vote by mail here too but applying for an absentee ballot but since I didn’t expect to be out of town, I didn’t pursue that option. Also, Oregon has had it as a mechanism far longer than we have – I think 2006 might have been the first time, but it could have been 2004 too – I’m not sure.
There is probably a pro-con thing like you mention – I obviously wasn’t as diligent as I could have been – but that’s not anyone else’s fault. I’m just saying that the state issue’s were fairly detailed on the ballot but my own town’s wasn’t.
My ballot is mailed to my registration address automatically along with the State Voter’s Guide. Other orgs. also mail them. Our ballots with citizen initiatives can get very involved. Considering OR’s experience and example I have no idea why it is that I get to watch people standing in lines and trying to work out ballots on site. Our turn out isn’t highest in the nation, but well up there. Our returns, minus write ins, are in early. We have a total paper trail and high satisfaction.
Republicans hate it. High turn out especially among the time affected voters, typically blue collar busy lower income. You’d think that with the number of uncontroversial elections we’ve held everybody would like it.
Doing elections other than this way is a dis-service to voters. Guess who I side with. I’ll push this while the lines and assorted BS are fresh in people’s minds.