Did My Vote Count?

Yesterday’s “Super Tuesday” primaries were extremely sketchy. I specifically asked the lady at my polling place: Do I need to write my registered address on the provisional ballot envelope? She said “No,” they have other ways of identifying me. Yet no ID was required. For the record, her nametag said “Angelica.”

My provisional vote may or may not have counted, I don’t know because I haven’t yet called to find out. I’ll call tomorrow, but please read this incredible account of what happened to at least a few voters yesterday…

What we have both personally experienced and have been getting tons of calls on is voter disenfranchisement at the polls yesterday. Let me explain; My son came with me to vote. He had changed his registration from American Independent to Republican so he could vote for Ron Paul and he met the deadline requirement by one day but was still shown as an American Independent Party member.

There was also another woman there who had changed her registration to Republican to vote the same way. They were told that they were not on the Republican list and could vote as Republican because they were assigned as another party. My son asked for a provisional ballot and was told no. They just crossed both names off the list of registered voters.

My son said, I won’t vote other than Republican. The other woman said the same. … And they had no idea of what else to do.

So, I came home and called the Registrar’s Office (not the number on the registration forms or in the phone book because they were all experiencing technical difficulties), I called a number I googled and got through 5 min before they were closed for the day.

The person I spoke with had no knowledge to anything. So she looked up my sons name and sure enough he was timely registered as a Republican. We were then told to go back to the poll and that they would make a call to those there as to the situation. Apparently, an updated add-on list was attached to the list of voters of which none of those working the polls knew of. Those running the polls were very incompetent. Why would we want people like this running our election polls? Maybe we should have stepped up to the plate. I think these people had their hearts in the right direction but didn’t know the ins and outs.

Anyway, I find out now that this wasn’t just a clerical error but a fast moving problem across the entire state of California.