Why I Chose Not to Vote Early

The 2008 election is now over (except for a few runoffs). My state had one of the longest early voting periods in the nation. There was a lot of encouragement to vote early. I thought about it, but I held out. I did not vote until the final election day, November 4th.

Why did I wait? Well, it was not because of any indecision on my part. I knew I was going to vote for the candidates who came closest to my own position on health care. I knew those were all Democrats. I knew how I was going to vote a few months before the election. So indecision had nothing to do with my delay.

No, my issue was that I had little confidence in the early voting system in my state. Historically, there have been many instances of problems with counting absentee ballots. I was not convinced those difficulties had been resolved. Furthermore, for the non-absentee touch screen early voting, there was no paper trail. I wanted my vote to count and felt safest placing it in the mainstream of votes on election day. There was still no paper trail, but I had greater confidence the system would work smoothly that day. I was amused to see that the presidential candidates themselves waited until that final day to cast their own votes.

Since I had made a donation to Barack Obama's political campaign, I was on their e-mailing list. I kept getting one message after another encouraging me to vote early and to get others to vote early as well. I was considering putting my concerns aside and doing exactly that when the news reports started coming in of long long lines at the early polling places. Some in my state had to wait as long as seven hours to cast their votes.

At first I thought it was just temporary. After a few days of people voting early surely the numbers would taper off to a trickle with maybe a slight rise on the last early voting day. I was wrong! It became something of a feedback loop. The reports of such long lines made some people fear they needed to go ahead and vote lest they find the lines impossibly long on election day. So more people voted early making the lines still longer.

I pondered requesting an absentee ballot which could be mailed in but really hesitated because of the history of these ballots. Sure enough, in a few days it was in the news that faulty absentee ballots had been mailed out. The problem with these ballots was that the ovals were the wrong size and shape for the optical scanners to read. In Hamlet's words, "Oh, my prophetic soul!" New ballots were mailed out, but all those that had been marked and already returned were going to have to be manually transcribed onto new ballots.

(Here we are days after the close of the election and my state, Georgia, is still counting absentee ballots. The outcome of a U.S. Senate race is hanging in the balance. Perhaps by Tuesday the Georgia Secretary of State will be able to certify the election results.)

There continued to be issues with voting machines not working properly. Some of the voting machines were not properly calibrated and were registering votes for the wrong candidates. There were computer voter verification delays, etc. until the early election period finally ended. My hope was that all the kinks in the system got worked out. Maybe with all the normal polling places open on the regular election day there would be enough facilities in operation that the wait to vote would not be hours upon hours. I took that gamble.

I considered getting up early so I could be at the polls and in line by 6 a.m. Ultimately, I decided against that. I understand that others in my precinct who did go early had a wait of about an hour and a half. A local church serves as the polling place for my precinct and the poll workers had people queue through the pews in the sanctuary. People who waited until just before the polls closed also had to wait for a while.

I went to vote just before noon. If it had not been for the signs pointing where to vote, I would have thought the polling place had been moved. I experienced absolutely no wait to get my voting machine key card. After that, I actually spent more time trying to get through all the elections and issues on the ballot than I did waiting for an available machine.

I thanked the poll workers who volunteer their time and energies to make the operation work. I did not realize until recently that most of that work was voluntary. I am grateful to all those who voted early. They got their votes out of the way so my own voting experience went much more smoothly. (Gratitude feels so much better than any sort of guilt for the painlessness of my own voting experience.)

More needs to be done to improve the integrity of the balloting process in this country. We must have confidence in the way the will of the people is tabulated to believe that we really have "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

We also need to do more to make voting less burdensome. My parents went to vote on one of the early days, but the line they encountered was about three hours long. With their health issues, that was not going to work. So, they went home.

Still, I am proud of our elections in this country. I am proud to be an American.

That's Wade's two cents.

Wade Houston
November 8, 2008