early voting in athens -- a personal experience observed

last week on monday, october 6, was the last day register to vote for ohio's 2008 election season. jerone had registered before but wanted to make sure it went through, so he decided to make use of early voting (so called "in person absentee voting") for first time free, an expansion of voting rights that got added in 2006.

so we went to the athens county board of elections on court street, an appropriately decorated office with a flurry of workers on that day including director debbie quivey who gave instructions when handing out the ballot how to go through the voting process.

but before being allowed deeper into the bowls of bureaucracy jerone had to take initial obstacles such as filling out three documents with name, address, social security number, and signature to confirm that he has received an intact ballot...which he hadn't at that point and refused to sign. he was assured he can sign later when he actually had the ballot in his hand.


this is a sample ballot for all races. the first sheet on the left details the presidential candidates including third party runners, which for ohio include according to the athens messenger (whose cover article of tuesday, october 14, 2008 is unfortunately not online as of now)

• green party: cynthia mckinney/rosa clemente (vp)
• constitution party: chuck baldwin/darrell castle (vp)
• libertarian party: bob barr/wayne allyn root (vp)
• socialist party: brian moore/stewart alexander (vp)
• independent: richard duncan

plus so called write-ins (because you have to write their names on a line in the ballot) such as "average joe" schriner and his vice presidential pick dale way.

and in contrast to the two big parties, these parties show more unity according to an npr report, one of the few reports in mass media giving some attention to the third party candidate.

it took jerone about 15 minutes to fill out all pale yellow sheets in one of the unfolded suitcase booths.

no wonder, these ballots detail besides the big presidential race (local) candidates for u.s. senate, u.s. house of representatives, ohio senate and house of representatives, athens county sheriff, coroner, and commissioner as well as a row of ballot issues. these are new levies that the citizens vote on such as renewing a tax for fire protection, the local highschool, to maintain cemeteries, to give permission to sell beer or wine or both at a certain gas station.

in order to give an example: this november athens county registered voters can say yay or nay to a levy renewal of 0.3 mill for the athens county and city health department that would run for ten years. a mill is an interesting concept of measurement that i'm not sure we do have in germany. it only applies to property owners.

a mill means that for each $1.000 of taxed property (only a certain percatage of the value of each property you have is taxed) they have to pay 1$ for a levy. in the example of the health department, for example if you have a property worth $100.000 and property tax is 41%, then for the $41,000 of taxed property you would pay 0.3 mill (i.e. 0.3x$1) for every $1.000, i.e. 41 times that amount. so each year you would pay $12.3 to support the health department.

but back to early voting, right at the entrance of the athens county board of elections a signed warned off campaigners in town...

... who at a legal distance kept up the fight to get as many people registered as possible.

they were easy to find, at least on the democratic side, since little sprayed symbol "o"s and stickers on the sidewalk led all the athens gretels and haensels in bread crump style to their tables and acolytes.

after having fulfilled his citizens' duty of "having made a difference", jerone was rewarded with a sticker. who says it's not worth voting?