voting in athens 101

an account of a us citizen and his voting experience in the ohio primary on march 4, 2008 in athens as told to the author of this blog:

it's eleven am and the voter steps out of his apartment to attend to his duty as a citizen: vote in the primary. on this special day, the obama campaign didn't miss the chance to remind our voter of his option with a little greeting on the door knob.

despite pouring rain our voter heads to his voting location
which for him is the convocation center on the ohio university campus.

but alas! he has a hard time finding a parking spot:
part of the parking lot is reserved for possessors of a parking pass until 3 pm.

metered parking is taken up by non-possessors who need to access west green. it seems that despite election day no suspension of the regular parking rules have been initiated to facilitate participation in the voting game. however, our voter managed to claim a coveted parking meter spot.

entering the condo his first step is to identify himself in front of the people running this polling location. he is then given the choice to pick a democratic or republican ballot.

he chooses wisely and proceeds to the -- quote -- "rather wobbly" stork-legged voting booths neatly lined up in a neat row.

the booth offers our voter privacy for his decision

and detailed instructions on what to do with his ballot which in a nutshell means filling out really well one of the bubbles on the multiple choice
with a provided pen as shown in the graphic on the sheet.

then our voter has to take his filled out bubble sheet to the voting machine. despite the fact that the ballot explicitly demands "do not detach stub" -- which is a horizontal paper strip at the bottom of the ballot -- he has to tear off same stub to be able to feed the ballot in the voting machine. the little orphaned stub then finds a new home in a cozy pink stub folder attached to the voting machine which itself retains the paper ballot plus an electronic copy. in case our voter would have left all bubbles unmarked the machine would have questioned his decision. but our voter has followed procedure as deemed proper and so the machine rewards him with a number: 39. that's the number of people who have voted at that location as of 11.30 am.

after having fulfilled his duty for this day despite discouraging rain, parking troubles, "wobbly" booths, and confusing directions our voter returns home just to find another, all too familiar sign of the probably most enthusiastic campaign in athens.