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   Paco Hope (paco@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Nov-2025 06:06:29 JST Paco Hope

   in reply to

   We use paper ballots that are scanned by machine. You can see one below. The machines are set to handle a bunch of different situations:

   overvote: voting for more than one person (eg for President) or more than allowed (eg marking 4 choices for school board when you can only select 3)undervote: voting, say, for president but not filling in any vote for vice president. This happens a lot on 2 sided ballots like we have today. Candidates for office on the front, and a bond issue on the back. People don’t flip it over and vote the back side.blank ballots. Sometimes people want to cast a blank ballot as a matter of protest or some kind of statement.In any of these situations it looks like an accident or an error at first. The machine will beep and kick the ballot back out. Maybe the voter really wants to vote this way. We must let them. So if you put it back in, it will take the ballot, errors and all.

   I see a lot of unusual circumstances as a chief (or assistant chief) #electionofficer. I have only seen the machine kick a ballot back maybe 3 or 4 times. It doesn’t happen every election. In my experience it was always a mistake. But if you think about the kind of voter who cannot follow these instructions and do this right on the first time, they usually have some comprehension issue: language unfamiliarity, learning disability, etc.

   When this happens we have to slow down and take care to (a) give them the instructions in a way they understand, (b) not tip into “assisting” the voter unless they explicitly ask us to. I can’t mark their ballot for them. I can’t even point at it (if I want to point at something, I have a demonstration ballot to use). As far as I can remember, everyone succeeded on their second ballot.

   So what do we do with the ballot the machine kicked back?
   Edit: forgot to attach the picture of the sample ballot.
   7/

2. Embed this notice
   Paco Hope (paco@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Nov-2025 06:06:28 JST Paco Hope

   in reply to

   Cast your mind back to June 2020. Presidential #election is on people’s minds. #voters are gearing up. People who have never voted before are gonna register and #vote! (Yay!) in June 2020, in my district, the Republican Party held a primary for their federal races. The way we do it in Fairfax is the same mechanism as a real election. I assume the party compensates the county for the expense of running an election. But we run a party primary like any other election. In June 2020, the democrats did not run a primary.

   One more quirk of Virginia (some states aren’t like this) is that (a) we don’t track what political party you’re affiliated with (if any) and (b) you can vote in any party primary, but only one party’s primary. Wanna flip back and forth between party primaries every other election? That’s acceptable by Virginia law. This means that you check in at the desk and tell us what party primary you want to vote in. That’s it. If there is only one party primary, every registered voter is elegible to vote in it, so we don’t even have to ask.

   I live in an area with a high number of Democratic Party voters. In June 2020 a lot of new voters were showing up for the first time and were excited to vote before November. They’re inexperienced. They don’t know the difference between a party primary and an actual election. And frankly, in our county, the two events look identical except what’s on the ballot.

   So a bunch of new voters show up intending to find some Democratic candidate to support. And they get this ballot and they’re like “WTF!? There’s nothing but republicans on this ballot! I’m not voting for a republican!”

   We issued about 3 ballots to different people who left in a huff without voting. Then we started asking people, before we completed the check in. “It’s a republican primary on the ballot today. Is that what you want to vote in?” Plenty of people left without voting, but we didn’t have any more “fleeing voters” to account for in our paperwork.

   #electionofficer
   11/

3. Embed this notice
   AnarchoNinaWrites (anarchoninawrites@jorts.horse)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 05:28:25 JST AnarchoNinaWrites

   in reply to

   @craignicol I honestly don't think so, or I wouldn't be talking the way I am.

   The shape of the problem is: the fossil fuels have to go, the capitalism (both in terms of pre-existing wealth, and wealth generation for billionaires and the ruling class) DEPENDS on the fossil fuels so the capitalism has to go, and finally the ruling class order is not going to let you end capitalism without enacting violence to prevent it; this will never be on the ballot.

   So? It's revolution or die. Pretty sure.

4. Embed this notice
   Michael Busch (michael_w_busch@mastodon.online)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 10:09:26 JST Michael Busch

   in reply to

   @mekkaokereke

   Here in Minnesota; we have a man running to unseat a state judge because said judge refused to let him continue to harass his ex-wife.

   Which some voters may miss because the judicial elections are way down the ballot.

   So. Yeah.

   (Fortunately, almost everyone who does vote there will vote for the incumbent).

5. Embed this notice
   Charles Gaba (charlesgaba@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 11:30:32 JST Charles Gaba

   🔥 During the **2020 election cycle** I raised **$5.93 million** for Democrats up & down the ballot.

   So far this cycle I've raised **$11.94 million** for Democrats up & down the ballot.

   That's **more than twice as much**...with 24 days left to go.

   Keep it going at https://Blue24.org.