Posted on 02/07/2008 8:14:36 AM PST by SmithL
Voters in California have been encouraged to use mail-in absentee ballots for years now. The idea is to increase participation. And it has.
But this year some voters are wishing they hadn't done it.
Mary Wirth, an adjunct law professor at Hastings College and Sunset District resident, got an e-mail Wednesday morning from one of her closest friends. She'd voted early, but then changed her mind on election day.
"She had outrageous buyer's remorse," Wirth said. "She said, 'I feel like such an idiot.' "
Join the crowd.
It wasn't just that some voters made their selection early and then wished they'd had a chance to jump on the bandwagon of someone like Democrat Barack Obama or Republican Mike Huckabee, each of whom made national "Super Tuesday" surges on the day of the California primary election.
Some voters saw their candidate vanish before their eyes.
Marrisa Maciel, a former Berkeley resident now going to school in Santa Cruz, was among the 165,000 California voters who cast a ballot for Democrat John Edwards.
"I sent in my ballot three weeks ago," she said. "A few days later he was gone. My friends were laughing at me."
"For the first time, this election may force people to reconsider absentee voting," said David Binder, a San Francisco political pollster. "We've seen a downside we've never considered before."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I think we should have ranked voting where if your first choice drops out the second ranked vote would count.
So Thompson voters would vote for Romney for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRV
I would agree.
Voted absentee for FT, because he said he was going to stay in the race till super Tuesday.
If I would have waited I would have voted MR to keep JM from winning this district. JM only won by a few hundred votes.
Never mind primary elections, I’ve had buyer’s remorse for every presidential election since 1988, absentee or no.
If and when we vote Absentee....we never send them until the last minute.....or we deliver them to our local polling place.....I don’t trust the County....
Here in Calif. I marked my absentee ballot for FT, but didn’t mail it in because he dropped out. On Tuesday I told them I wanted them to void my ballot and give me another one so I could vote for the candidate of my choice who was still running. They gave me a very hard time and told me I should just go with my previously marked ballot because “it wouldn’t make any difference since all the delegates are going to be allocated anyway.” I kept insisting, and they finally told me I would have to come back later because they didn’t know what to do. It did get resolved 2 hours later though.
I worked the polls and I spent about a hour convincing the supervisor she was wrong on a couple of serious issues.
Another reason is I like to go down to the voting place and ask for the Republican ballot just to see the look on the workers faces’s
Of course we don’t get to vote until May 6th. Lot will change by then but I’ll vote anyway.
I think that for primary elections people should, if they can, go to the polls and cast their ballot. If a person is disabled and it’s a burden to make it to the polls, then another means to cast a vote should be developed. Sending in absentee ballots for a primary that takes place later in the cycle means risking having your vote be disenfranchised.
That actually scares me. Who was doing the allocating. If you voted Fred whose to say your allocation isn't going to McCain?
I’m too paranoid to vote absentee, except when absolutely necessary. I always joke that I’ll vote absentee, and then my candidate will kill somebody, or get caught with little kids; and my vote is sitting in some box waiting to be cast.
McCain needs to wake up and smell the "VILE"!!!
"Bipartisanship" Is A Dirty Word; and RUSH: "We want to defeat them"
I don’t trust absentee voting. Many more votes would have gone for Romney at the last moment to help him beat McAmnesty.
I am compelled to ask, why were they laughing? Because her vote was thrown in the trash by her voting early, or that whe would vote for silky pony in the first place?
"Actually," said Mulholland, "it has to be in the government's hand by 8 p.m. election day. In Los Angeles County, 36,819 ballots were received the day after the election. They are all null and void."
What does "in the hands of the government" mean? Isn't the USPS "the government"? And if 36,819 were "received" (I assume they mean by the election office) on February 6th, those would have had to be mailed (and "in the hands of the government"--USPS) on February 5th.
Call me confused.
When is the last day to return my voted absentee ballot?Absentee ballots must be received by elections officials no later than the close of polls (8 p.m.) on Election Day.
Postmarks are not acceptable in California.
They will get another chance in the election.
However, I don’t know if anyone has caught on yet. We conservatives have been stripped of both our choices and vote.
Does that mean anything to anyone?
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