Voting in San Francisco

There were no lines at my polling place which was conveniently located just around the corner. At 11:15 PST mine was the 17th paper ballot put in the box according to a digital readout on the machine. I could be wrong about the digital display. Perhaps they remove the ballots on an hourly basis and reset the number. I don't know.

The low turnout could be that I live in a very poor part of San Francisco. Most people in my neighborhood are more worried about how they are going to pay the rent than who to vote for. Just by observation the demographic of my neighborhood is an even mixture of hispanics, muslims, and college students. So how does this jibe with the recent surge in California voters?

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Effect-of-spike-in-vot...

Since the first of the year, the state has registered nearly 2 million new voters. And the number is growing. Last month, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said that in a 48-hour period, May 16-17, California registered almost 200,000 voters online. As Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc. wrote, it was “an astounding figure,” almost as high as the total online registration for the past two years.

...and San Francisco is no different...

San Francisco has experienced the same surge in voter registration as the rest of the state. Latterman says there are roughly 50,000 new voters, 58 to 60 percent of whom are Democrats.

There was one minor issue with my vote that was pointed out after I had placed my ballot in the lock box. The said they had given me the wrong ballot. I'm registered as No Party Preference (NPP). I asked for a Democratic Party ballot and they gave it to me. Apparently there are two ballots 1) Democratic Party and 2) Democratic Party NPP. As far as I could tell the ballots were identical. All the names I wanted to vote for were on the ballot I was given. The ballot was as expected based on my review of the Voter's Guide.

But, now I'm curious why there are two different ballots for Dem and Dem NPP.

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...except they didn't catch it. I'm registered non-partisan and so should have received the Dem NPP ballot, but they gave me a Democratic Party ballot instead, which also includes County Central Committee candidates. That's the difference. I didn't vote for any of those since I'm not up on any of those people, besides not being able to. I hope it doesn't spoil the ballot.

Turnout was also very light at my location across the bay, which isn't a good sign at all. But there hasn't been a line there in a bunch of years for some reason, I think the last must have been at least 10-15 years ago.

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WaveyDavey's picture

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they handed me my ballot (after tearing off the voter's stub themselves and handing stub back to me separately prior to me leaving for private voting booth, ok that was weird/uncalled for I thought) then with no other person in line behind me and plenty of poll stations open, I walked away from that poll worker (who was talking to newly-arrived co-worker) and opened my folder with ballot to discover I was given only half of the democratic ballot!

The poll worker had done a thorough job in other aspects, like finding my often-misspelled name and weird address and instructing me to choose only a single candidate for State Senator out of the huge pool... But I received only one page of two, and pause pause pause/waiting for them to notice, nope, I had to go back an ask for the second page. I know it was a mistake, but thanks to AP's assholery, today is not a day I'm willing to suffer such mistakes so easily.

How are we not supposed to be reeling mad about voter suppression, hmm??? to all those warm and fuzzy HRC supporters??? But nope, not a peep, because a glass ceiling got shattered (my ass).

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WaveyDavey's picture

Just so there would still be people voting for Bernie even after the media reported that Hillary was the "presumptive candidate". But when I woke up this morning an read about the AP's assholerey I changed my mind and did it as soon as possible.

I did walk the entire way home with a smile on my face and the thought in my head "Wow! I actually just got to vote for both a great and viable presidential candidate!" Something I never thought I would ever get to do.

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WaveyDavey's picture

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/04/fueling-sanders-turnout-hope...

A video near the end of the article is a woman who tells how she was told during poll training that NPP voters were not to be allowed to vote but instead should be given a provisional ballot.

Luckily this woman knew otherwise and confronted the poll trainer.

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Shahryar's picture

and the shenanigans

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