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Early Voting
By Cathy
I had the chance to vote absentee, anyone can for good cause. I am the parent of a disabled child and the caregiver of an elderly parent so it is often difficult for me to get out and do things on a schedule. Absentee voting is my option. This year I heard about www.leaveyourprint.com, and early voting. The website has site information and times for early voting. You don’t even need to go to the early voting place nearest to you. That is the beauty of it!
There is a paper ballot, you do not get to touch it but you get to see it print out each page. You get the chance to preview and change your vote before casting it electronically.
I am not sure what they do for the blind anymore (i.e. braille voting), but this new electronic system allows you to make the printer larger like your computer only bigger! You also get to adjust the contrast. Great since in the past you often got into a booth or in place that had bad lighting. Tough to see the print at times.
I do believe that the printer is not just plain ink but a thermal printer which is almost impossible to change. It is embossing the print via a thermal process onto special paper.
The only down side is the card you use to vote with. They reuse them. Some people had problems getting them to “click” properly to activate the voting process. Otherwise I loved the new system.
Now, no one has and excuse not to vote since you have many days on which to vote.
Happy voting returns!
Posted by Editor on October 27, 2006 06:55 PM
Comments
In Salt Lake County at least, you don't need an excuse to vote by paper ballot. There is a vote-by-mail program now. The problem with Diebold and other electronic voting systems, as everyone ought to know by now, is that they are designed so that the vote totals can be undetectably hacked. In the absence of a very strict and transparent election audit system (not the 1 percent audit we've been promised), there is no way of knowing if we've had an honest election.
Posted by: rmwarnick at October 30, 2006 11:08 AM
Since 2004, you don't need a reason to vote by mail. You can sign up to permanently vote by mail everywhere in Utah.
I was also concerned about the cards. I remember my U of U student card used the same "Smart-Chip" technology, but eventually was replaced. Many people's (myself included) had theirs completely fail, so they just went to the same old magnetic strip technology. I don't know what the Elections Office was thinking when they got the chip cards instead of something else. Probably more Diebold requirements.
Posted by: brett at October 30, 2006 01:22 PM
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