Tuesday, November 02, 2004

What Allegheny County Is Doing Right

As I've already voted, I want to write a bit about what was working right this morning. My earlier post was a reaction to County Executive Don Onorato's contention that very little was going wrong. While I take that with a grain of salt what he said about the newly registered, those of us who've been registered for a while shouldn't have a problem.

Jim, Leslie and I got in line at about 10 to 7 this morning. For our precinct, we were voters 5, 6, and 7. Two other precincts vote in the same location, and there were maybe about 25 people in line at 10 to 7.

The voter rolls looked easier to read, and the scanned signature of the voter from a previous vote was included. I think that's a very good idea and should help prevent fraud. Some of the records had a special text flag - either ABSENTEE or CHECK ID. I was relieved to see this, as that, too, should help prevent fraud.

We had finished voting by about 7:04. Three more votes for Kerry/Edwards!!! The line outside the voting place had grown to about 60.

Since we were so early, we didn't have to run any kind of gauntlet because none of the candidate's poll watchers were there yet!