Should the results start getting to you – either coming in too quickly or not quickly enough, should the night drag on and ESPN2 with the UB Bulls playing Miami of Ohio Red Hawks – yes, billed as the battle of the blue and red – try playing Candy-Date Land. No, it does not have anything to do with dating but with candidates.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08309/925076-42.stm
Brought to you by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Is this really what news coverage has come to? First, this morning, there was the crabgrass remark by Bob Schieffer. Now, I am watching CNN and they are “beaming” holographic reporters into the studio.
This is not what I want in my reporting. I am off to watch college football.
So I bought a hard copy of the Press & Sun-Bulletin on Sunday so I could show my 18 year old son what the actual ballot would look like for his first ever trip to the ballot box – or as we know it, the voting booth. I explained how he would vote on the same machines that his grandmother had voted on – something he may not have been thrilled with.
After watching the news last night and again this morning – the local news, I told him to be sure he had his driver’s license with him. He didn’t want me to go with him and make a big deal out of this so he left the house at a little after 7 am to vote on his way to school. I tried to explain this may not be a great time but the polls had been open for a little over an hour. Off he went!
After talking to my son, no questions about ID. No questions about anything!
Of course, I am going to start my day at about this time yesterday – Monday, November 3.
I went grocery shopping yesterday. The schedule around my house has been extremely hectic and I had not been to the grocery store for any serious shopping in quite some time. I was out of sugar, out of flour and out of whole wheat flour. I had no meat in the house but quite a few leftovers from Halloween and my 18 year old’s birthday gathering on Saturday night.
What is up with canned kidney beans? I am not a bean soaker. I prefer to buy my beans in a can and rinse them very well. I wanted to get a 40 ounce can of red kidney beans. There were no 40 ounce cans of either dark or light red kidney beans. There were no 15 ounce cans of either dark or light kidney beans. The only can of kidney beans in the Giant on Hooper Road were the #10 food service size. Has there been some sort of recall on kidney beans that I am unaware of?
Then, I wake up this morning to an email from school. Emails from school do not normally bother me. I have working relationships with several teachers and just finished chairing a major music booster fundraiser. To receive an email from school is not astounding. The first problem is that the email was time stamped 1:15 pm yesterday afternoon. The school district – with approximately 2700 students – has sent so much email to Roadrunner email addresses that it has exceeded its limit. Now all email from the district is put into a “file” and gone through individually. This means that someone is reading or some program is reading my emails before I am. While I do understand Roadrunner’s point of view in trying to prevent or cut down on spam, I am particularly annoyed they think spam is coming from a school district.
Then, I actually read the email. Evidently there are kids in one of my children’s classes that are having issues with the teacher. My son, being the ever astute child, knows that tenure is at least three years into employment and told the kids that if they wanted their parents to complain about the teacher, it should be now before said teacher gets tenure. My son has seen me go up against a tenured teacher, to no avail. I have sat in the principal’s office when the teacher thought he would get me to back down when he requested union representation at the meeting. I told them I was more than happy to wait and let another level headed adult hear my case also.
The teacher that had emailed me said the matter would be discussed with my son. It was also indicated that the teacher felt his statement was something that should be dealt with at the principal level but since the teacher knew I was an involved parent, the teacher would bring it to me to help solve. While I did solve that problem, I also let the teacher know, in no uncertain terms, my feelings on this issue.
The teacher indicated in the original email that a talk with my son would happen today. No such talk occurred. Now, I am more annoyed than before because I could have ignored the initial emails since I didn’t think it was an issue. I didn’t but the teacher, then, did not follow through.
Literally and figuratively. I just returned, about an hour ago, from my polling place. You see, I run to my local polling location. Up until two years ago, this was a relatively flat prospect. Then, the local fire department started a building project on the station on Route 26. The polling location moved to Union Center Christian Church and has not moved back, even though the construction is finished. The distance is not all that much – 3.16 miles round trip according to mapmyrun.com.
Was it painless? Yes, the casting of my votes was painless. Was it without question? No, if you read on, you will realize that my experience has actually brought a lot of questions to my mind.
My first question was concerning the woman who entered UCCC in front of me. She had on an Exit Real Estate shirt. I believe I know which realtor it was but am not 100% positive. As a matter of privacy, I walked slowly as she was not yet signing her name in the book. Realize that my last name starts with a C and that would put me in the beginning of the alphabet and the realtor was monopolizing the woman with that book. I took a step closer and heard the realtor say – “OH good. He voted and so did he.” The election worker was showing her that someone had or had not voted. I don’t believe this is legal – family members or not – and I believe this person’s last name starts with a letter at the end of the alphabet, or in the other book.
Shock number one and I wasn’t even to the table to sign the book yet.
Once the realtor had left, I gave the election worker my last name and pointed out – as most refuse to believe that my first name is actually Nicki – my entry in the book. No ID required though I had my license with me as I was not making the run up Boswell Hill Road more than once (see my primary experience).
I did have to wait about ten minutes to get into the voting booth. I have never had to do anything more than walk in and sign the book and walk into the booth. There is only one voting booth were I vote. From the discussion the poll workers were having while I waited, I guess there are between 500 and 600 people registered to vote at this location. You may say, how do I figure? There are either five or six names on each page. The one woman said she had 43 pages and the other responded she had 53 pages. That puts me at between 480 and 576 voters in this particular election. I was voter 147 at a little before 11 am. My son, who left the house at 7:02 am, was voter 42.
Another little tidbit from the poll workers’ discussions came when one of them discovered pages in the back of each book for changes of addresses. Both of them said they had no idea what these were for or what to do with these entries. Could they take a change of address? Could they find all the information that was necessary for each form? What are these for? More importantly, why don’t those working at the polls know the answer to this question.
Now came the most interesting part of voting. A woman in a wheelchair came in. The church is very handicap accessible. The tables that the “books” are on are a good height so she had no trouble signing the book. I am not sure that her voting experience was the same. The new electronic voting machine was just off to the side of the lever voting booth. What do I hear but the poll worker – who is digging for a key and an instruction sheet – say that the machine is set for audio voting. This machine is not in a separate room. It is not even away from where every one else is voting. If there is going to be audio voting, would a separate room not be required to keep with voting in secret?
How was your polling experience?
Yes, I now have CNN on my television. CNN started publicizing a hotline to report voter irregularities last week or the week before. They reported on some during early voting in both Georgia and Florida.
I have heard of some strange happenings in the local area thanks to Pressconnects.com but the recent voting irregularities report on CNN had the most interesting problem.
Weather in southern parts of Virginia and in North Carolina is horrible. People are waiting in torrential downpours two or more hours to vote. Thank you to all of you doing this as it is important that you vote.
The problem – people are so wet that their paper ballots will not feed through the optical reader after marked. Poll workers have asked those with this problem to leave their soggy ballots in a box (a bunch of soggy paper in a box will dry?) and the ballots will be fed through the reader later.
I am not confident in this solution for several reasons. First, if you place a number of soggy ballots in a box, the one or two or even five or ten on top may dry out but those one or two or ten at the bottom are going to just get soggier. Second, if people are currently waiting two hours, or more, to vote in this area, the poll workers are going to be busy. They are not going to have time to feed multiple ballots through an optical reader.
What would you do if you were a voter faced with this issue?
Should you be tired early this evening of hearing about the lines voters don’t want to wait in (this is a small price to pay for the type of society we live in), the faulty machines that are being used (I am really hoping this doesn’t make big headlines), or how close or not close the election is before people on the west coast are even out of work, turn your television dial to ESPN2.
The only NCAA football game of the day is being broadcast live from the University at Buffalo this evening. This game could well have bowl game implications. It will be a welcome distraction from election results.
Kick-off is set for 7:30 pm on ESPN2. The University at Buffalo Bulls will play the Miami of Ohio Red Hawks in a tough eastern division MAC game. You can look at Yahoo’s report on the Bulls and the game here. Or, get a local perspective with the Buffalo News article.
Yes, I admit it. I turn my television set to CBS when I turn it on in the morning. I am not particularly a big fan of CBS news but I do want the local news on WBNG, the local CBS affiliate.
So, I still have CBS on and the Early Show has Bob Schieffer – yes, the man I said one the last presidential debate as he did such a good job in moderating in my mind – talking about counting John McCain out of the election.
Imagine my shock, I had to rewind my TV and listen to it again. Schieffer said that John McCain was like crabgrass – always there. The always there part was great but do you really compare a man who could wake up tomorrow morning as president-elect of the United States to crabgrass?
I have always encouraged my daughter, who is a senior at Niagara University and will graduate with a degree in elementary education and a minor in literacy, to stay in the Niagara area and student teach. My theory was that even the “city” school districts in our area are not true inner city school districts. She needs to know what teaching in such a district would be like to be sure she would want to do that if offered a job in such a district.
She listened to my arguments and did stay in Niagara to student teach. Her first placement was in a kindergarten class in Colonial Village in the Niagara-Wheatfield district. She compared the school to the elementary school her younger siblings went to here locally – Maine Memorial. She loved the kindergarten class. Her only real shock was that most of the kindergarten kids had not been in an organized school setting previously.
She is now in her second placement. This is in a third grade class in the Niagara Falls City District. I received a call after she got back to her apartment yesterday. When she got to school, the teachers were all gathered around and talking like something big was going on. It was.
Over the weekend, a man in Niagara Falls had shot and killed his estranged wife. The couple had a child at the school. The man was still at large. My daughter was in total amazement. There was no offer of counselling for students, or staff for that matter, by the school. The building was not on lock down. As far as the principal was concerned, this was just another Monday at 79th Street school.
I don’t know what would happen under the same circumstances in this area. Hopefully, I never will find out. I do believe, though, that local districts – especially with the father still at large – would have been under lock down. I also want to believe that counseling would be offered for both students and staff.
In retrospect, the lock down was not necessary. Articles in this morning’s Buffalo News and Niagara Gazette indicate that the father killed himself, most likely on Sunday evening.
Is this the reaction you would expect from the district your children attend? What reaction do you think should have been taken?
I grew up in a very political home. My grandmother was a poll worker/election inspector. My best friend’s father was the county democratic chair. I volunteered on my first presidential campaign in 1972 at the age of 11, stuffing envelopes for George McGovern. My father could not believe, when I finally registered to vote, that I registered as a democrat. My mother and my stepfather have been poll workers/election inspectors for years, although they opted to not work this year.
I have voted in every election I have been eligible to vote in since September of 1979 when I turned 18. I never even gave it a second thought, when in college in the Adirondacks and later in West Virginia, to register in that location. I would fill out an absentee ballot request and then the absentee ballot. I have encouraged my voting age children – I have five of them this year – to vote here locally, either by going to the polls or by absentee ballot. I also encouraged, once out of college and living on his own, my son in East Syracuse to change his registration to Onondaga County.
All this said, I don’t understand college students voting where they go to school. Can someone out there explain to me how a temporary address at a college is good enough to allow registration to vote in that area?
I am not discouraging college students from voting. Far from it. I just want to understand why the big push to have them vote where they go to school.
