The USA midterm elections (halfway between presidential elections) will be next Tuesday. We will elect 1/3 of the Senate and all of the House of Representatives, the two houses of our federal legislature. Additionally, there will be many state and local elections. Although voter turn-out is lower in midterm elections, there are several hotly contested races that will attract more voters. It will be possible for the legislature to flip from Republican to Democratic control (our main political parties). If so, this will weaken the power of the current Republican President since it will be harder for him to get legislative approval for his programs.
We have many types of voting, from paper ballots to touch screen monitors. I will mark a paper ballot (PDF file) that will be read electronically. We will be able to see the results of most of the elections on television on Tuesday evening, and most will be decided without protest. A few will require closer inspection and possibly court decisions, but it is rare for an election to be overturned and often these lead to criminal charges.
I am fairly confident that the elections will be counted correctly, but not surprised at claims of inaccuracies or fraud. There have always been corrupt politicians and always will be. Poll watchers and media attention help keep problems to a low level. My main complaint is that we usually vote against the worse candidate rather than for a better one.
How and when will you be voting?
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
To voting we will go....
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5 comments:
Your ballot is quite interesting. It looks a bit confusing to me. Isn't it a problem for some less educated people to vote? (In BG we have that problem and when they introduced the integral ballot some voices were raised)
You'll have to fill in the arrows for senator and representative, right? And the others remain blank?
How about Straight Party Voting - do you mark your party in every election?
Can you choose a dem for senator and rep for representative?
'Write in' - someone independent? How can you become an independent candidate?
Don't you have other parties?
Must you vote for the amendments? Does voting only for a senator and leaving other arrows blank make your ballot invalid?
So many questions, I'm stopping :)
Many questions! I tried to keep the original post simple (and short) but will add whatever people want to know here :)
The PDF of the ballot is more confusing than the real one because of the arrows from the center section. My ballot will only have the front and back page with the appropriate races filled in the blank boxes (for State Senator, I live in district 7, so my ballot will have Parker Griffith and Cherly Baswell-Guthrie in that box). There will be paid helpers at the polling place for anyone who needs assistance, but the helpers have strict guidelines as to what they can do. I think the ballot I use is very clear and simple after you go through it once.
We fill in one arrow for each race, so I have 35 arrows to fill for offices and then 4 arrows to fill for issues.
If I mark the arrow for straight party voting, all my votes will be counted for that party's candidates. It's used by obstinate or lazy people, and not marked unless you want to vote that way.
Yes, we vote how we wish on each individual office (unless we use the straight party voting already mentioned)
I can 'write in' anyone I wish- even myself. Occasionally someone will wage a 'write in' campaign trying to get elected even though they are not on the ballot for some reason. Sometimes they are successful.
We have several other parties- the Libertarians, the Socialists, the Communists, the Green Party,...
They are small and have few candidates for office. They show up more in the Presidential election years.
I can vote for as many offices as I choose- even turn in a blank ballot. So many of the amendments are for local issues (a problem with Alabama's constitution) that many people don't vote on those. And any race that is uncontested is silly to vote on, but I like to write-in a name on those. No one is doing a good enough job to be elected 100% ;)
I hope that my answers are clear, please ask if you cannot understand them or have any other questions.
PS: I checked the link on the ballot and have corrected it to this year's ballot. (oops!)
Thanks for the explanations :) I must admit I'd never seen such a ballot. For last month's elections here there were simple ballots with the names of the seven candidates and a number before them. You just have to mark the number... And then they are counted by hand. Well, for a small country that works, but for larger ones using computers to count makes a lot of sense.
If you go to google image and search "election ballot" you get a wide range of sample ballots, including the Iraqi election.
I don't know how many states use the same ballot we use, but I know some of the very small districts still mark and count paper ballots by hand as it is more efficient for them.
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