Who did you vote for in the U.S. Presidential Election?

[miked]

Showed up at 8:30 or so, no line, in and out in 10 minutes. Held my nose and voted for Obama. In GA, only 3 on the ballot so I didn't feel like writing in McKinney

Came down in the end to who I think will move the country forward. I've seen nothing from McPalin that would suggest they are prepared to much, except make stupid health care legislation and bailout stupid homeowners. I'm not convinced Obama can do 20% of what he proposes, but hey, at least he's proposing things rather than sitting back and sniping everything. Negative campaigning FTL.

Edit: Voted for Jim Martin too which almost caused me to vomit, but I would have voted for my left nut over Saxby. I can't wait until Sonny is up for re-election.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by miked

I didn't feel like writing in McKinney

Who was actually one of nine recognized write-in candidates for President on the Georgia ballot. Oddly enough, only three candidates went through the process to be recognized for Vice-President.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Who was actually one of nine recognized write-in candidates for President on the Georgia ballot. Oddly enough, only three candidates went through the process to be recognized for Vice-President.

We had 6 on the Illinois ballot, including one guy without a VP or a party. Must be a bored millionaire who scrounged up the signatures to get on the ballot.

I can't remember exactly but I think besides the Big Two, we had Green, Nader, Barr, Constitution and this other guy.

[flere-imsaho]

Really good write-up on fivethirtyeight.com about Why You Should Not Believe Exit Polls:

1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error than regular polls. This is because of what are known as cluster sampling techniques. Exit polls are not conducted at all precincts, but only at some fraction thereof. Although these precincts are selected at random and are supposed to be reflective of their states as a whole, this introduces another opportunity for error to occur (say, for instance, that a particular precinct has been canvassed especially heavily by one of the campaigns). This makes the margins for error somewhere between 50-90% higher than they would be for comparable telephone surveys.

2. Exit polls have consistently overstated the Democratic share of the vote. Many of you will recall this happening in 2004, when leaked exit polls suggested that John Kerry would have a much better day than he actually had. But this phenomenon was hardly unique to 2004. In 2000, for instance, exit polls had Al Gore winning states like Alabama and Georgia (!). If you go back and watch The War Room, you'll find George Stephanopolous and James Carville gloating over exit polls showing Bill Clinton winning states like Indiana and Texas, which of course he did not win.

3. Exit polls were particularly bad in this year's primaries. They overstated Barack Obama's performance by an average of about 7 points.

4. Exit polls challenge the definition of a random sample. Although the exit polls have theoretically established procedures to collect a random sample -- essentially, having the interviewer approach every nth person who leaves the polling place -- in practice this is hard to execute at a busy polling place, particularly when the pollster may be standing many yards away from the polling place itself because of electioneering laws.

5. Democrats may be more likely to participate in exit polls. Related to items #1 and #4 above, Scott Rasmussen has found that Democrats supporters are more likely to agree to participate in exit polls, probably because they are more enthusiastic about this election.

6. Exit polls may have problems calibrating results from early voting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, exit polls will attempt account for people who voted before election day in most (although not all) states by means of a random telephone sample of such voters. However, this requires the polling firms to guess at the ratio of early voters to regular ones, and sometimes they do not guess correctly. In Florida in 2000, for instance, there was a significant underestimation of the absentee vote, which that year was a substantially Republican vote, leading to an overestimation of Al Gore's share of the vote, and contributing to the infamous miscall of the state.

7. Exit polls may also miss late voters. By "late" voters I mean persons who come to their polling place in the last couple of hours of the day, after the exit polls are out of the field. Although there is no clear consensus about which types of voters tend to vote later rather than earlier, this adds another way in which the sample may be nonrandom, particularly in precincts with long lines or extended voting hours.

8. "Leaked" exit poll results may not be the genuine article. Sometimes, sources like Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty have gotten their hands on the actual exit polls collected by the network pools. At other times, they may be reporting data from "first-wave" exit polls, which contain extremely small sample sizes and are not calibrated for their demographics. And at other places on the Internet (though likely not from Gergahty and Drudge, who actually have reasonably good track records), you may see numbers that are completely fabricated.

9. A high-turnout election may make demographic weighting difficult. Just as regular, telephone polls are having difficulty this cycle estimating turnout demographics -- will younger voters and minorities show up in greater numbers? -- the same challenges await exit pollsters. Remember, an exit poll is not a definitive record of what happened at the polling place; it is at best a random sampling.

10. You'll know the actual results soon enough anyway. Have patience, my friends, and consider yourselves lucky: in France, it is illegal to conduct a poll of any kind within 48 hours of the election. But exit polls are really more trouble than they're worth, at least as a predictive tool. An independent panel created by CNN in the wake of the Florida disaster in 2000 recommended that the network completely ignore exit polls when calling particular states. I suggest that you do the same.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I showed up at my polling station at 7:05 this morning, about 5 minutes after the polls officially opened. I had to wait for an hour and a half in line, but I came prepared for with my iPod and Blackberry, so it wasn't too bad. I was the 144th person to vote in my precinct.

I can't believe we're still using scantron machines to vote. That's crazy.

Other than the usual stuff, it was particularly nice to vote in favor of Proposition 2 here in Michigan. Prop 2 allows for stem cell research in Michigan. Not only am I happy to vote in favor of such research, but I am particularly happy to vote against those who oppose it. Over the last few months there have been non-stop TV ads against this proposition using the tag line: "2 Goes 2 Far." I understand that some people are against stem cell research for religious reasons. I don't agree with them, but I udnerstand it. These ads, however, didn't make any of those types of arguments. Instead, they jam packed with ridiculousness claiming that stem cell research would lead to corporations harvesting embroys, human cloning, and human-animal hybrids. (Personally, I like the idea of cloning and human-animal hybrids, but that's beside the point.) I really hope this thing passes.

[Buccaneer]

Just voted after dropping my son off at school (since the polling place is right there). There were only 10-12 people in front of me but the line went slow because they were checking and re-checking IDs. Three election judges plus two very official-looking vote monitors (whatever they were called). I made the mistake of wanting to do touch-screen but we only had one machine and it was taking about 8-15 minutes per person. I went back to the table and got a paper ballot instead and it only took less than 5 minutes to fill in the bubbles since I already had my cheat-sheet after reviewing all of the initiatives last night. Tonight I'l explain to my son why the local initiatives are far more important and that we should not put our faith in the federal government.

[Tigercat]

Ugh, went right after the polls opened, no parking spots, 2 hour and 15 minute wait. Everywhere else I have lived and voted (Kentucky, Louisiana) had more voting machines than my precinct today. And yet my precinct today serves the largest number of people. Go figure.

[rjolley]

My wife and I got at the polls at 7:15. Stood on line for about an hour an a half. We get to the front and one of the two machines they're using to check that you're registered breaks down. We finally get past that bottleneck and voting takes about 2 minutes.

My wife commented the lines were never this long when she voted before. She also thought we'd be out of there in an hour. I figured somewhere closer to 2.

The thing that really pisses me off? Only two people with machines to validate voter id cards, but around 14 actual voting machines. My wife wondered why they had to check the registry and shouldn't the voter registration card be enough. My answer was to combat voter fraud. Another thing, why weren't there 4 or 5 machines with a backup of a printed out list. When we left, there was one person checking registrations, and it was taking her 30 seconds or so to do so. That's a lot of pissed people in line.

Also, the way they had the voting machines set up wasn't the best. You could easily look over the very low partition to see someone else's screen (maybe it's because I'm taller than the average person by a bit, but I don't think so). You could also see from anyplace in the room if you situated yourself correctly. Just glancing around the room while in line, I could see a few screens. If I really cared enough about how they voted, I could tell.

[Crim]

Originally Posted by Fighter of Foo

Hijack:

Third parties have to worry about actual disenfranchisement more than anything subtle.

In Texas, the Lib party was the only one to meet the Texas state election board's deadline for submitting a candidate, as required by law. Both the dems and Repubs missed it. No reason other than they didn't do it. The board then announced that, in fact, Obama and McCain's names would appear on the ballot.

The Lib party sued, saying that it's written very clearly you have to submit your candidates by date X. The court dismissed it without giving any reason whatsoever.

Next door in LA, the Lib party missed the deadline to file, because the election office was closed due to a hurricane. When the Libs came back the next week to file the response was, sorry, you missed it.

America: Hypocrisy in Action

That's really an interesting story. I wonder if the Texas judge's ruling could have been based on some sort of will of the people type argument? I'm totally uneducated in this sort of thing, but I could see as a judge in that circumstance, the good of the people of Texas not being served by ruling against the Reps and Dems.

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Really good write-up on fivethirtyeight.com about Why You Should Not Believe Exit Polls:

Yes, there certainly are significant issues surrounding sample selection and execution of the national election poll. But, as I've stated in the past, exit polls are useful tools whose primary purpose, believe it or not, is not to project election races, but to assess the underlying demographics and opinion and how it relates to behavior. This type of data is not collected elsewhere in such a comprehensive way.

Exit polls are only a minor input in the statistical models used in election night projection. Actual vote (both sampled precinct and raw vote) always has had more importance in the models.

One thing I definitely would agree with--do not believe an exit poll number you see before 6pm. Those are likely to be incomplete and unweighted (if not outright false).

[miked]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

Instead, they jam packed with ridiculousness claiming that stem cell research would lead to corporations harvesting embroys, human cloning, and human-animal hybrids. (Personally, I like the idea of cloning and human-animal hybrids, but that's beside the point.) I really hope this thing passes.

Manimal FTW!

Better yet, beware Manbearpig.

[Alan T]

Heh.. MSNBC when showing live Palin voting, they panned down while she was in the booth I assume to show that she was dressed very casually (in jeans and such).. unintentional I assume, they just leave the camera sitting on her butt for a good 30-45 seconds before realizing that they may want to show a different camera angle on national tv.

[Crim]

lol

[sterlingice]

I was #248 and my wife #249 at our polling place in Richmond. It was an elementary school in the suburbs but relatively painless since we waited until almost 10 to vote. Had the electronic voting machines that I'm not at all a fan of.

Was in and out in under 20 minutes but they said that was the slowest they had seen it all day. Then again, our ballot was pretty limited: P/VP, Senate, House and that's it. A big change from in Kansas where you voted on judges, city commissioners, county commissioners, ballot measures, etc.

SI

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Heh.. MSNBC when showing live Palin voting, they panned down while she was in the booth I assume to show that she was dressed very casually (in jeans and such).. unintentional I assume, they just leave the camera sitting on her butt for a good 30-45 seconds before realizing that they may want to show a different camera angle on national tv.

Nothing wrong with showing off her assets.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by miked

Manimal FTW!

Better yet, beware Manbearpig.

Stop it! I'm being super cereal, you guys! I'm really really cereal!

[NoSkillz]

I'm Canadian and we have great fishing up here...easy decision.

[KWhit]

I early voted, but my wife is an election official and I ran by to see her this morning. There was no line at all. In fact, there was only one person voting at all. Weird.

I guess early voting was a really big hit.

[Sun Tzu]

[BrianD]

My voting process took 22 minutes from the time I left my house to the time I returned to it. I enjoy small-town mid-day voting.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

I think the early morning panic voting has subsided. I spoke with a friend on the election board and he said that after the initial rush this morning in Missouri, most polling places are reporting no waiting time. They expect waiting over lunch and in the evening, but nothing more than what occurred in the previous two presidential elections.

[rjolley]

Yeah, that was my feeling while I was in line. If I'd waited until 10:30 or so, there wouldn't be any line at all.

[I. J. Reilly]

Question for everyone else who has electronic voting machines, was there a straight party line option on yours? Here in Texas it was the first option; you could select Dem, Rep or Lib and have it fill in that candidate for every race. For some reason this really bothers me, as most of the down ticket races are going to be decided by voters who have never even seen either candidates name. I know a lot of people vote strictly based on party affiliation, but doesn’t it seem wrong that it is being so strongly encouraged by the structure of the ballot?

Anyway, it struck me as strange, but this is my first election outside of Oregon where they only use mail in ballots.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by I. J. Reilly

Question for everyone else who has electronic voting machines, was there a straight party line option on yours?

There used to be one in Georgia but AFAIK it went away completely several elections prior to the introduction of electronic machines (we had a lot of places with mechanical machines from at least the 60's into the 90's).

IIRC, there was at least one election cycle where the option covered every race except President & that created enough problems that it was bounced entirely.

In some ways I'd like to see it put back, would probably save some time in the voting process.

edit to add: Here's an article (from a notorious liberal hack) talking about the subject from 2001, references the option being removed sometime in the 90's.
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/...29010040.shtml

[Fighter of Foo]

Originally Posted by Crim

That's really an interesting story. I wonder if the Texas judge's ruling could have been based on some sort of will of the people type argument? I'm totally uneducated in this sort of thing, but I could see as a judge in that circumstance, the good of the people of Texas not being served by ruling against the Reps and Dems.

Sadly, no


THE FOLLOWING PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS IS DENIED:
08-0761 IN RE BOB BARR, WAYNE ALLEN ROOT, AND THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF TEXAS (link)

That's the whole response.


Here's the Louisiana story.

[spleen1015]

I did vote this morning, but I did not place a vote for President. Neither one of the options earned my vote.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

I did vote this morning, but I did not place a vote for President. Neither one of the options earned my vote.

YOU'RE KILLING AMERICA

[lordscarlet]

Our line was MUCH longer than in 2004. It was wrapped around 2 sides of a city block. Having said that, it went pretty smoothly. I was there about 50 minutes. I did save a lot of time because my last name started with a letter between "I" and "S". I would imagine I bypassed at least 100 people.

[lordscarlet]

Dola: I voted across the board. A Republican, some Democrats, some (Statehood) Green and a Libertarian.

[muns]

Hour and 30 mins around me here in Baltimore to vote, and with the rain coming down now, some people are just walking away

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by I. J. Reilly

Question for everyone else who has electronic voting machines, was there a straight party line option on yours? Here in Texas it was the first option; you could select Dem, Rep or Lib and have it fill in that candidate for every race. For some reason this really bothers me, as most of the down ticket races are going to be decided by voters who have never even seen either candidates name. I know a lot of people vote strictly based on party affiliation, but doesn’t it seem wrong that it is being so strongly encouraged by the structure of the ballot?

Anyway, it struck me as strange, but this is my first election outside of Oregon where they only use mail in ballots.

Wisconsin paper ballots are laid out the same way. The first option is to vote straight party. If you bypass that line, you can vote each race individually.

[Alan T]

I am suprised that Massachusetts doesn't have a straight party vote on their ballots. Everyone i know (including my wife) pretty much vote all Democrats. I guess that is different out in western Massachusetts, but I don't get out that way very often.

[lungs]

At my voting precinct, it was me and only one other person voting. I was number 171 to cast my vote.

My neighbor did show up as I was walking out the door. All in all, my total voting time was probably less than 3 minutes.

[kcchief19]

2 hours, 15 minutes for me this morning, and the line was three hours plus when I left. Finished voting at 10:30 and was the 910th vote on my ballot box, and there was at least one other ballot box.

Mizzou BB-Fan: Do you vote at Pleasant Valley Baptist? That's my precinct. The A-D and E-H lines were atrocious but if your last name started with I-L or T-Z you could get through in about 10 minutes. Clay County really needs to split this precinct -- it's the fast growing precinct in the county and they haven't split it the the seven years I've lived in it. Dividing the alphabet evenly based on voters and not just letters would be nice too.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by kcchief19

2 hours, 15 minutes for me this morning, and the line was three hours plus when I left. Finished voting at 10:30 and was the 910th vote on my ballot box, and there was at least one other ballot box.

Mizzou BB-Fan: Do you vote at Pleasant Valley Baptist? That's my precinct. The A-D and E-H lines were atrocious but if your last name started with I-L or T-Z you could get through in about 10 minutes. Clay County really needs to split this precinct -- it's the fast growing precinct in the county and they haven't split it the the seven years I've lived in it. Dividing the alphabet evenly based on voters and not just letters would be nice too.

Is that on Church Road? If so, then I think it is the same place. Last name starts with an L.

[NoMyths]

Just got back from voting in North Charleston -- waited in line for three hours. The surprising part was that I didn't see anyone leave the line, either in the ones ahead (that had been waiting for the same period) or the ones behind.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by KWhit

I early voted, but my wife is an election official and I ran by to see her this morning. There was no line at all. In fact, there was only one person voting at all. Weird.

I guess early voting was a really big hit.

Yup. Our counties had over a third of registered voters cast early, with over 50% in my voting district already having voted. I walked in, voted, walked out. There were probably 8 people voting, and about 18 machines.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Klinglerware

Exit polls are only a minor input in the statistical models used in election night projection. Actual vote (both sampled precinct and raw vote) always has had more importance in the models.

That's a load of crock, given that they traditionally project long before any actual vote counts are available...

10 minutes to vote at my precinct at around 2:15 PM tonight.

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

That's a load of crock, given that they traditionally project long before any actual vote counts are available...

10 minutes to vote at my precinct at around 2:15 PM tonight.

Actually, I used to work as a statistical analyst at the provider (albeit at a junior level) back in the day. It's been awhile, but I doubt that the system has changed significantly.

Anyway, in early calls, actual vote coming from randomly sampled precincts are more important to the models (the operation, via talks with local election officials, ensures that this precinct data is available). Even then, it would take a fairly significant spread to call a race based on vote sample+exit poll alone.

Yes, exit polls are incorporated in the models. In some cases, yes they will be a primary determinant of a call--but typically only in races where there is a huge spread in the expected direction, and if the data collection looks complete. But in closer races, their importance decreases as actual vote becomes available.

[CamEdwards]

No waiting at my polling place in southwestern Fairfax County around 2 p.m. this afternoon. My wife had to wait about ten minutes to cast her vote at 10:30 this morning.

[Mustang]

No wait at our polling station at 1:15. I waited with our daughter while my wife voted and then we switched.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Big time delay looming on vote counts from major Atlanta metro county (Gwinnett) due to problems with absentee ballots making them unreadable by machine. 19,000 of them being copied by hand one by one onto new forms in order to get them counted.
Gwinnett faulty ballots taking time to transfer | ajc.com

Now maybe I'm just stupid but ... wouldn't it make about as much sense just to count them from the originals instead of making duplicates to be read by machine?

[lordscarlet]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Big time delay looming on vote counts from major Atlanta metro county (Gwinnett) due to problems with absentee ballots making them unreadable by machine. 19,000 of them being copied by hand one by one onto new forms in order to get them counted.
Gwinnett faulty ballots taking time to transfer | ajc.com

Now maybe I'm just stupid but ... wouldn't it make about as much sense just to count them from the originals instead of making duplicates to be read by machine?

Now why would they do something sensible like that?

[Cringer]

The wife and I just got back from voting. There was a wait, but it wasn't because of a line to vote. My polling place is an elementary school, and the wife delayed us long enough that we got there right when 300 cars were trying to get into the school parking lot to pick up their kids. Saw some nice MILFs though so I will let it go. Holy crap were there some good MILFs! I wish the moms of the kids on my soccer team were that hot.

Back on topic. I hadn't decided what I would do for President until I got there. It was Obama or Barr, yes I know two very different ways to go but that is how I am. It came down to the fact I just don't like Barr enough even if I really did want to vote Libertarian. So I voted for Obama.

The rest I was then very surprised and happy. I knew of a couple Lib candidates but didn't know there was one for just about every race. So I went straight Lib Party the rest of the way until I hit the purely local stuff where it was Dem or Rep. In those cases it was anti-incumbent usually.

My big dilemma was picking our 449th State Distric Judge, where the choices were a guy who just got his 2nd DUI and a guy who used to be the city attorney for the city I live in and is not a guy I want in office. I hate guys who get DUI's but I voted for that guy.

[Buccaneer]

My wife and I got into an argument because I was pissed that she called my vote for president "wasted". I told her my vote was probably more thoughtful than most people's votes because they based their votes on superficialities. She's not talking to me. Women. Whatever.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

My wife and I got into an argument because I was pissed that she called my vote for president "wasted". I told her my vote was probably more thoughtful than most people's votes because they based their votes on superficialities. She's not talking to me. Women. Whatever.

Who'd she want you to vote for? McKinney?

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by Cringer

Back on topic. I hadn't decided what I would do for President until I got there. It was Obama or Barr, yes I know two very different ways to go but that is how I am. It came down to the fact I just don't like Barr enough even if I really did want to vote Libertarian. So I voted for Obama.

The rest I was then very surprised and happy. I knew of a couple Lib candidates but didn't know there was one for just about every race. So I went straight Lib Party the rest of the way until I hit the purely local stuff where it was Dem or Rep. In those cases it was anti-incumbent usually.

Does the Lib party focus on the congressional/Senate races? Barr got my vote. I like some of his ideas (Fair Tax is one example) I don't like either of the two major candidates enough. Plus, I figured one more vote always helps in the long run for the party.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

Who'd she want you to vote for? McKinney?

She used the words "have to choose from one of the big two". That was offensive to me.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

Does the Lib party focus on the congressional/Senate races?

They should. Actually, they should start at the grassroots level, like state houses and work their way up - instead of trying to make a splash at the top. Actually, with many states having to submit balanced budgets or to ask voters for tax increases, there are a lot of libertarian-style mindsets/governments in action. Something has to chip away at the traditional two-party machines and their laws to reduce fairness and choices.

[Karlifornia]

I showed up to my polling place at about 3 PM my time. There were only three polling stations (all pen and paper ballots...no machines). There was no wait time at all.

I voted for Obama, no on prop 8, no on requiring parental notification for abortion, and yes on giving chickens more space.