VOTE

Voter #304 at 12:55 PM

I voted today. Did you?

Pennsylvania doesn't have early voting. Early November weather is always a crapshoot - some years it's fine, some years there are snowstorms bad enough to close roads. This year it rained, at least for the first half of the day. I wonder if the rain was enough to convince some people to stay home?

My precinct in Nanticoke introduced some new technology this year. Instead of signing your name on a line in a book upside-down next to a record of your signature, this year you signed with a stylus on an electronic pad. (How well will that work? How long until it breaks down and shuts down the voting process?) Then it prints out a slip which you hand to the next person, who leads you to one of the decade-old (at least) touchscreen voting machines. You tell the machine you want to vote, then you vote, then you tell the machine that you voted and it should count your vote. (Actually, now that I think of it, maybe these were new touchscreen machines - I didn't see the big "VOTE" button that flashes at the end.)

And that was it. In and out in five minutes.

If you didn't vote yet, you still have a few hours left as of this writing.