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Reader Gina Piccalo writes from Echo Park:
Hi there. Just wanted to let you know - I waited in line for 30 minutes at the Allesandro polling spot alongside about 40 other (mostly hipster) neighbors. By 8:30, the machine that tallies the ballots had jammed and the polling staffer took great pains to show everyone she hadn't tampered with it. She had to feed the ballots manually. Not sure how that will impact counting votes.. but it isn't encouraging.
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It took me about 45 minutes to vote even though I got there at 7:30am. The system is well organized though they could not find my registration. I had to do a provisional. When I got out the line was around the block, so go in early to vote. Give yourself plenty of time.
to the reader who was concerned about the reader jamming and the possibility that it would negatively impact the tally:
relax.
the machine simply checks for blank or overvoted (more than one vote cast for the same race = invalid) ballots to give you the opportunity to correct the mistake by filling in the (blank) ballot or request a fresh ballot.
all votes are counted in norwalk - there's no official tallying done at the precinct level - other than the total number of ballots cast by type (vote by mail, provisional, regularly-cast ballots, voided ballots, etc).
30 minute wait in silverlake at the free clinic on sunset as of 9am, wait wasn't too bad (plus the 10 minutes going up, voting, and getting ou, 40 minutes total).
One of the inking things ate a ballot (it fell in?), but the election officials had it under control really fast and they ended up taking it out of service. Saw three people duck out of line before they got to the front (did they not expect a wait?)
everything else went smoothly!
We had the same problem back at the beginning of the year. Someone tossed their receipt into the machine instead of the ballot. The machine got stuck trying to spit the receipt back out. After that it wouldn't accept a ballot. Screwed that puppy up but good.
Since all the machine does is verify a valid ballot and then feeds that ballot into the ballot box it's malfunction was no big deal. All the ballots were counted regardless.
Eventually we were told to shut the machine off (unplug it), wait one minute, and plug it back in. This fixed the problem and it didn't lose it's count having been shut off.
I was disappointed that someone didn't give us this solution for over two hours.
Used the same polling place as Gina around at 8:40 am - took me exactly 20 minutes, including my voting time. People brought their babies, husbands, wives along with them to vote. I felt such a kinship with everyone and was so proud to see my little polling place have a minor swell. No issues except the state measures had question marks at the end of them, ie. "This would increase goodnesss in this nasty world?"
Is that normal?
Breezed right in at 9:10am in Silver Lake.
For the first time ever, my precinct above Woodbury Univ. in Sun Valley, had as many or more Demo's as GOP voters. I had to fight an urge to punch YES on Prop 8 b/c of the uber-creepy George Takei, but my cooler, more sensible side prevailed. MANDATE!