One Precinct, One Visit, One Voter’s Perspective (The Ballot That Almost Ate the Voting Booth)

I just went and voted. There are a couple of normally dull but this time very heated races in our area for Kings School Board (8 running for 3 seats) and Deerfield Township Trustee (9 or 10 running for 2). There was a cool web site that had video presentations made by each candidate. Those plus some “don’t vote for this person” advice from elsewhere made me reasonably informed going in. Otherwise I would have had to punt.

Turnout at my precinct was above June’s and August’s but looks like it will be below Blackwell’s 41% statewide prediction. This precinct, I was told, has a lots of renters, apparently (which suprises me–maybe we need to have a ballot issue on drawing precinct lines), and therefore lower-than-average turnout.

My reaction to the ballot language in the booth: What a monster, and all because of Issues 1-5. The text area must have been 3-4 times wider than normal. I have not seen anything like it in the 30 years I have been voting, and the poll workers I talked to don’t recall seeing anything like it in their lifetimes. If it were any wider, they would have had to bring in wider booths.

I suspect a lot of voters who come in less than prepared will take one look at the monster and hit it with 5 quick “no” votes. The visceral logic of such a decision really isn’t that bad: If you need that much space for ballot language, it must be too complicated for the real world. We’ll see.