Surreal, to say the least. Complete disconnect between government departments. Chaos during the first 15 minutes of voting. And lots of… paper?

Last night I finally remembered to look online, to see where I had to go to vote. As part of this search, you can enter in your name or your address, and it will tell you where to go. By name and by address, I wasn’t found. Not that unexpected. After all, I registered when I got my license back in July – it took almost a year for my last town in Connecticut to update the master list after a move – so I was OK with that. I looked on the county map, to see which district I was in, and saw that I had to go to a local church.

The polls opened at 7, so I went a little early, and got there at 6:45. Waited with about 30 other people, until the voting start exactly at 7 – line wasn’t bad at all, and as I was leaving there was no line at all. As I walked in the front door, there was a table where people could look up their district… I had mine already, so I went to the line with my district number.

“Where’s your card?” was the greeting. I explained that I was new to the state, and registered in July, but what card are ya talking about. “The card that tells you what district you’re in,” was the retort, and I was obviously without one. I explained that I looked it up online, and by my address, I was pretty sure I was at the right table. “You’re not on my list,” was the conclusion, and I was banished to the main table, so that I could be looked up.

After a few searches and clucks of a workers tongue, I was told that I could fill out a provisional ballot, although I think they wrote me up for the wrong region after all – they sent me back to the wrong table! This notion of a provisional ballot is something new to me: in CT, if you weren’t registered on the day of the election, you were admonished and sent home. OK, cool – I can still get my vote in and I can work out the DOL snafu early next year. That’s when I noticed around me that people were lurking for pens…

WA uses a pen and paper balloting system. Paper. And pens. Like the IOWA or SAT test, but without the Number 2 pencils.

CT had machines. Honest. You’d walk into a booth, close a curtain, pull a bunch of levels, and open the curtain (which registered your votes and cleared the machine for the next voter). Old machines. Like older than me, old. Washington – the state that has whole towns planning WiFi coverage and more technology than you can shake a joystick at – has paper ballots. Riiight. Oh, and in CT, we get our plastic license straightaway – in WA they have to mail it to you. It’s not like CT is a bastion of advance – if anything it’s rather repressed in a lot of ways – which is why it confuses me so… I just don’t get it.

Anyway, I have a tracking number for my provisional ballot, so I can keep an eye on it. I’m really only going to be concerned if it comes down to one vote in either direction and there’s a problem… then I can push to get it counted, but either way I’ve done my civic duty, so I’m happy.

This all helps to explain why a lot of local residents used an absentee ballot to cast their vote last month – it guarantees you’re registered to vote and bypasses the entire polling system… not that this year was all that painful, as it was cumbersome.

And next year, I’ll be dipping into the absentee ballot pool myself, unless they get cool new machines to play with.