Voted

[magid]

I voted about twenty minutes ago, and my two ballots were 637 and 638. Which is to say, I was the 314th voter, and my polling place has 3038 people registered to vote there. The polls are open until 8, but it's unlikely to be a huge turnout for a midterm election where the only races are for city council and the school board, and there are no referenda.

The ballots are always interesting, since I can vote for as many people as I want, but I have to rank them 1, 2, 3, .... Which is why every campaign sign in Cambridge exhorts people to give the candidate their #1 vote. Even knowing what it means, it sounds odd.

Oh, and filling in bubbles on standardized tests comes in useful, too, since it's set up as a Scantron-type ballot. I've never used an electronic voting machine, and I hope never to (it's not just the last couple of Presidential elections that have made me feel this way, but it hasn't helped.)

Comments

vote early...

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

vote often? Two ballots?

I wish we'd had cambridge-style voting today, as it would have made my voting easier.

Re: vote early...

[magid.livejournal.com]

One ballot for the school board, one ballot for city council. They need a lot of room for the zillions of bubbles marching in lines across the page.

Interestingly, the ballots are different sizes, and I think some of the color was different, too. I assume that's to make it easier to sort them when counting ballots, but it helps distinguish them to voters, too.

Too many good choices in Medford?

(I don't know that anywhere else uses this style of voting, however much the politics professors think it's a good way. It does mean delays in hearing results, sometimes, since counting votes becomes that much more involved.)

Re: vote early...

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

nope, some I really liked and some I really disliked and a whole lot of eh in between. instant runoff would have allowed me to rank my yay candidates up high and then fill in with eh and exclude yuck.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

I'm not even certain there was anything to vote on today in LA. We've had about 4 special elections this year, so who knows what would have been left to vote on at this stage.

[ckd]

I think mine were 723/724. I don't know how many registered voters in my precinct, though. It's a mega-off-year since not only are the only items the council and the school board, all incumbents are running so there are no empty seats being chased.

I got down to #9 on my city council ballot.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I asked one of the poll workers how many people were registered there, just out of curiosity.

I should pay more attention to local politics. I've interacted with one city council member, who was quite helpful on an issue I care about, and ever since, she's had my number one vote. I looked at some of the candidate statements, but didn't run into anything objectionable on any of them. I wish I'd been able to find a comparison of candidates like I've seen done in Boston.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Four special elections in one year? That's nuts.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

Hot off the press....

There are 56,641 registered voters in Cambridge of which 41,271 are marked "Active" which means that they either voted in a recent election (I don't know how recent) or filled out the annual census form. The Inactive ones cannot be removed from the rolls for several years. People who move to another MA city and reregister properly will be unregistered in Cambridge since the data base is actually statewide.

16,528 people voted today (this is a very low number; in 2003 20,958 ballots were cast). The unofficial results which excludes 534 of those ballots becvause they were not properly read by the scanners and will be processed tomorrow were released.
On the School committee for which there were 8 people running for 6 positions, two incumbents were not reelected (Lummis and McGovern).

On the Council, it looks like David Maher was the only incumbent not elected, being replaced by Craig Kelly but this might change after the other ballots are included.

There are 33 precincts so about 500 people voted at each precinct.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the numbers, and the preliminary results.

That means that a little more than a third of Cambridge residents are "active" voters. I wonder how this compares with other municipalities. (Not really a fair number, given that there are kids, people officially registered elsewhere, or ineligible to vote, but as a rough metric, I guess it works.)

[Before moving to Cambridge, I'd always voted in schools, so I was surprised to find my polling place is the lobby of a hospital. With 33 precincts, obviously, there aren't enough schools to go around, but it still is strange walking into a hospital lobby to vote.]