so I move around a lot and don't bother to learn all the ins and outs of election laws. but this pissed me off:
I live in NJ but work in NYC so I wasn't sure if I'd make it to the polls. To be safe I ordered an absentee ballot. It arrived around Oct 25th. The instructions said it had to be returned to the county clerk (i think) by the 28th. Not postmarked by the 28th, not by the actual day of the election, but to them by the 28th. So I didn't have time. I thought, no problem, I'll just vote at the polls.
So I made sure to be in NJ on election day, went to the polls, and my name was marked as having requested an absentee ballot, and they wouldn't let me vote. I said I didn't turn in the ballot, and even if they did, they could just check the rolls and see I'd voted, throwing out the other one. THey wouldn't even let me turn in my absentee ballot at the polls (that's what I did last year in Arizona).
It just seems like they make it so damned hard, the instructions are counter-intuitive (based on my recollection of Florida 2000, I'd have thought all you had to do was postmark your ballot by the election date) and the onus is totally on the voter, not the system, to make sure your vote gets counted. And I'm not illiterate, nor am I uninclined to find out the procedures. So if I can screw it up, I imagine a lot of people do.
I know, whine whine...