I road my bike to up to our polling place late this afternoon, and parked it unlocked outside, thinking it would take the usual time, less than five minutes, to vote.
The number I received was 74, a pathetic turnout, as is the norm for primaries. So, easy in, easy out. Man, was I wrong.
I was the only one there for the nearly 25 minutes it took to cast a ballot. Seven times, I drew a black line, connecting two points to indicate my selection, and seven times, the ES&S optical reader refused my ballot.
I asked how many of the 74 people had the same problem. They said about half, and 15 or so left disgusted and didn't cast their ballot. But I was patient, I was determined to get my vote in, even though there was no opposition to the candidates I would be choosing, and Wisconsin primaries are straight-party ticket affairs.
The volunteers were flummoxed and extremely apologetic, as if they had something to do with the voting equipment, or the printing of the ballots. But they tried everything, opening new packets of ballots, saying the printing may be off, asking me to draw darker, heavier lines ... and each of those seven times, as many as five people examined my ballot, turning it over and over to look at bar code lines and such. So much for my selections being private.
The elections inspector said the machine was old and they'd tested it yesterday to make sure everything was up to snuff. 40 ballots went through with no error notice, but by mid afternoon, that all changed. They figured it was the ballot printing, but assured me an ES&S technician was coming the next day to check out the machine. I plan to follow up until I get an answer. Was it the ballot printing? Was it the machine? Was it both? What are you going to do to make sure this doesn't happen in November?
On the eighth try, my ballot was accepted. I thanked the volunteers for all they do, then walked out of the dingy, little polling place, expecting my bicycle to no longer be where I parked it, taken by some kid who wanted it more than I did.
But my bike was there, and I rode home in the seventy-degree September sunshine wondering what the hell is going to happen in the Wisconsin cold of November.
UPDATE: For the record, I never experienced problems voting at this precinct in the last six years.
UPDATE: I phoned the clerk's office today to follow up, find out if they discovered what the problem was. The answer? Old pens. Apparently the pens had been sitting around for a while and the graphite in them had dissipated and could no longer be read by the optical scanner. For the November election, they're switching to pencils.