When you know you take voting seriously

[ckd]

When you're the 22nd (hr_macgirl) and 23rd (me) people to vote in your precinct, at 1830. (Polls closed at 2000.)

Special election to fill a vacant seat; the only actual race was in the Democratic primary, and so there was only one candidate on the ballot (plus the write-in line).

It was amusing to see how happy the poll workers were to see us, though.

Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Wow. We had the Republican primary for sheriff recently* and I was the 87th in my precinct at about 2pm.

*In Virginia, you don't register for a party and you can vote in either primary, but not both. In this case, there was not only not a Democratic primary, there won't be a Democratic candidate, so whoever won the Republican primary would be the sheriff. Fortunately, most people agreed with me and the guy I voted for won with 61%. The scary part was that the guy who wanted to make the sheriff's office into illegal immigration deportation central got 18%.

[ckd]

The MA voting system, like our street layout, is confusing and tied up in historical contingencies.

You can be registered in a party, in which case you can only vote in that party's primary. A party must meet certain criteria (a certain percentage of the vote for a statewide office, or a minimum number of registered voters choosing that party). If it doesn't, it's a "political designation". The list of both is online.

At the moment, there are four parties: Republican, Democratic, Green-Rainbow, and Working Families. (The last had a candidate for Auditor who made the threshold.) In past years, the Libertarian Party has managed to get enough of a statewide run together to be a major party, but not in 2006.

If you're not in a party, you're considered Unenrolled, which is what anywhere else would call Independent, but here we have a designation for the "American Independent Party". (With a whopping 184 members.) There are also designations for the Green Party and Rainbow Coalition, even though they've been running candidates on a joint ticket as Green-Rainbow.

I think my favorite designation name is Timesizing Not Downsizing.

If you're an Unenrolled voter you can vote in any party's primary. If you vote in a Presidential primary, you are automatically enrolled in that party, but can re-unenroll immediately thereafter; they'll even give you a postcard to mail in to make it easier. Other primaries don't auto-enroll you.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

In Virginia, we've only ever had Nader and LaRouche seriously on the ballots -- at least in the 37 years I've lived here. But we do get Independents who figure they'll get a better deal that way than through the Republican primary. A lot of Republicans run unopposed.