Maryland Primary Day Voting

Of course I voted.  Since I turned 18, I've only missed one Primary or General Election.  That was Carter vs Reagan.  I din't want to vote for either.  I preferred John Anderson then and the lines were so long it didn't seem to be worth standing in line for a few hours for a protest vote.

Maryland (at least my part of it) is VERY good about providing many voting places these days.  20 years ago, the lines were HOURS long; today, they are MUCH shorter.  

Today, I rolled in and there were no lines.  Got approved to vote, was given a folder with a strip of paper, escorted to a touch-screen voting machine, and told to entry the paper strip into a slot.  It didn't work.  So they escorted me to another.  That one accepted the paper strip.  

Voting was so easy.  Tap a button for your choices.  A review comes up showing your choices, offering ways to change them in case of a mistake.  If you agree, the votes are recorded.  The machine sends the paper strip back out for a final review.  It was correct.  

Then you bring it to the counting machine.  And, BTW, the election officials won't even touch your slip of paper (lest there be any "sleight-of-hand").  I was in-and-out in 10 minutes.  I can't think of any way Maryland could make the voting process any easier or more secure!  And I got another "I Voted" sticker...  I wish I had saved them from decades ago.  I would have quite a collection!

I won't reveal my votes for the major Democratic Primary candidates (they all won, so you can figure it out if you want to).  But there were 10 Electoral College candidates and you could vote for 9.  One was "uncommitted" and the others were committed to my Presidential choice, so I voted for them.

School Board candidates are usually difficult (yes I even care about them).  I used to read summaries about each one from The League Of Women Voters, but they are blocked from providing information like that now.  It's not like they made recommendations.  They just allowed each candidate to provide several paragraphs about themselves.

I used to read those carefully.  School Board is officially non-partisan, but each candidate almost always used a few hints and code-phrases to tell you where they stood.  I miss that information very much.

But it didn't matter this time.  There were exactly the same number of candidates as there were positions to be filled, so there was no point in voting for them.  Maybe next election, I'll toss my name into the list!  I care about general education enough.

I now look forward to the General Election.

Voting

I love to vote.  And in fact, I love to go to the voting place on Election Day.  I voted by mail-in ballot in 2020 and afterwards it felt like I hadn't actually voted.  The process seems to be important to me...

I walk in and go straight to a table where a election official asks my name, address, and birthdate.  No line!  Prints out a small slip of paper which I sign and take to the next table.  

That person exams the printed slip of paper carefully (even though he clearly saw the clerk next to him produce it).  He asks if I want to vote by machine or paper (I choose machine) and he creates a longer slip of sturdier paper which will record my actual votes.  No line!

I go to the machine side of the room.  No line!  I am amazed some people want paper ballots (no line there either).  I hate filling in little circles with a pen, but some appear to prefer that.  Which is fine.  I like the touch screen machine; it is so easy.  

I have my sample ballot all filled out at home.  I research every choice a week ahead, right down to School Board and Judge of The Orphan's Court.  Referendums especially; some of them are written to be confusing, but a little internet work literally explains each one sentence by sentence.  And I check the sources of the explanations, too.  No political party or "cause" organization sites; Newspaper "fact-checker" and .edu sites are usually good.

So there I am comfortably seated at the touch screen.  First choice was Governor.  And it wouldn't accept my vote.  Huh?  Then I notice a box that says you must view all the candidate selections first".  Oh, because of 3rd/4th/5th/6th party candidates, it took 2 screens to show them all.  Talk about the election system trying to be as fair as possible!  So I do that, make my choice again, and move on through all the various elections.

After I have voted in all of them, I get a display showing all my choices.  I have to review them and confirm my choices (in case I made an error in one).  Another example of the Election Officials trying to be as fair as possible.

My State (Maryland) is wonderful about election fairness and accuracy.  We have no "hanging chads" here.  

When I confirm my choices, the machine prints out the results and returns it to me on the paper I initially inserted.  I take that to the last station, where I scan it in.  It confirms my choices have all been successfully registered.  The person there gives me an "I voted" sticker.

I was in and out in 10 minutes!

But I want to say it wasn't always like that.  When I moved here in 1986, my County Government was majority Republican.  Even back then, they didn't really much like or trust voters.  My 1st couple elections, they forced all voters in my town (of about 30,000) to vote at one high school.  The line was hideous and it took 4 hours!

And they liked it that way.  They recognized that more and more people from the Washington DC suburbs were moving to the County and they weren't mostly Republicans.  They (we) were escaping the high cost of housing, higher local taxes, etc.

My own town basically exists as a bedroom community of people who commuted to jobs in and around Washington DC.   If you saw a map of the town, you would see a semi-circle with the flat edge against the County line.  Everyone wanted to be close as possible to work but in "one County further away", LOL!

The result was that, after 10 years, my County became Democratic-majority voters and Democratic-governed!  The voting situation changed almost immediately.  Instead of 1 voting place in 1 high school (in my town), they set up a dozen smaller ones.  And with more voting booths.  The voting line went from 4 hours, to 30 minutes, to 10, and now 0.

I am not especially  dedicated to Maryland.  There are many other fine places to live.  I'm here because my parents lived in Maryland (Dad's job sent him here) and I simply went to the State University (and stayed around).  But I'm glad I did.

Equally, I am sure that some States have good voting systems too.  But some don't.  If every State's voting system was like Maryland's (or at least my County's), voting would be a lot more easy, fair, and accurate.  And that would be A Good Thing!

Keep in mind that I am not praising the elections results (though Maryland is a solidly Democratic State) so much as I am praising the voting process it has established.  We did after all, elect a Republic Governor for 2 terms (sensible moderate and rational guy).

But mostly, I wanted to say what a wonderful voting experience I had today, and why...