A resident is not allowed to vote on Saturday because the site at the Rec Center was not set up.
(Editor’s note: Lifelong resident John Wilson voted on Sunday at the Palisades Recreation Center, the only voting center in our town. He sent the following interesting account to Circling the News.)
I was at the Rec Center about 10 a.m. and quickly found a parking place about 500 yards from the polling entrance.
There was a short line with only two registrars working to check in people. A third registrar saw me waiting and took me to another area and tried to sign me in.
On the fourth try on a sign-in machine, I was verified and given a blank voting sheet with written instructions and told to go to an empty voting machine and follow the written instructions.
The first two voting machines were broken. I finally found a working machine with the help of a really kind and understanding voting volunteer.
Step one, read the instructions. The instructions are on a 3 x 5 card on both sides.
As I started to read, the kindly volunteer showed me where to put my blank ballot and push the start button. Voting took about five minutes and I was about a quarter of the way through this process, when I saw the “MORE” button, which when pressed showed more candidates for a particular office.
When I finished, my ballot came out and I picked it up thinking that now I had to deposit it, as I have always done in the past, in a voting box. WRONG. My guide asked me to read the ballot to make sure there were no mistakes and then go back to my machine, insert the ballot again, and answer a few more questions, at which point my ballot was eaten by the machine.
My guide said that was all I had to do, gave me a “I Voted” sticker and ushered my out the door.
I’m glad I went Sunday. It was a lot easier and faster. However, I think I will drop by Tuesday to watch the crowds try to figure out these new machines. By the way, as I left, several county workers were replacing broken voting machines in the row behind me. They weren’t the one’s I tried earlier. Hmmmm!