Dig Deeper Texas

So what was your voting experience like? Mine was pretty positive. I pulled up to my precinct polling place at around 9:00 am and easily found a place to park. A poll worker was putting up signs in the parking lot to point to which entrance to go to.

Inside, there were two tables set up, one for each half of the alphabet. Each table had two workers, one to look up your name and verify your information, another to have you sign the form saying you voted. I had to wait for one person in front of me before I checked in.

Then another worker took me over to one of the eight voting booths. Again, no wait since several were empty. When the person next to me was having a problem (She had mistakenly selected Spanish rather than English. They couldn’t figure out how to change it back so she just used a sample ballot and voted in Spanish) another worker came over to assist.

All told, my polling place had at least six election workers that I can be certain of for two precincts. Did I mention that I live in a pretty red precinct and on what would be considered a more affluent part of town?

Why might I mention this? Well, two years ago Dig ad veritas and I compared our voting experiences and found them to be very different. She had more precincts and fewer voting machines at her polling place and subsequently had to wait a lot longer to vote than me. She was also voting in a very blue precinct.

In all honesty, I can’t say that this is part of some organized effort to suppress voting in certain areas. I suspect it has more to do with some combination of “we’ve always done it that way,” the fact that I’m pretty sure my neighbors would would be registering many loud complaints if they had to wait more than ten minutes to vote, and that people in other precincts just assume everyone is facing the same situation.

They’re not. And Dig ad veritas and I spent Tuesday evening checking out the situation in some other precincts around town. To be continued.

Filed under: 2006 general election, Elections Administrator, Jacquelyn Callanen, bexar county, election, electronic voting, vote, voter fraud, voting methods, voting precinct