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The Spectacle Blog
From a friend in Alexandria, VA:
I voted this morning, and I felt like I was in the Virginia Soviet Socialist Republic.
For starters, not a single yard sign anywhere. Not in people’s yards. Not on Route 7 between Old Town and Falls Church, one of the busiest corridors in the entire region. Not on Quaker Lane. Not even at the polling place. I understand saving money, but I thought that there would be at least one sign at the precinct exhorting me to “Believe in America” with Comrade Mitt. No. For that matter, there was only one small “Vote Here” sign on the street, instead of the usual series of them.
In addition to the usual signs required by the Virginia Election Code, they also posted a sign on the door to the polling place informing voters that the law prohibits write-ins in primary elections (yes, actively forbids, even in areas that still use paper ballots). The sign said that votes for anyone other than official candidates would not be counted and that ballots should not be defaced. (Only Romney and Paul are on the ballot.)
We did not receive sample ballots in the mail (a first, and I am clearly a Republican and have been for 15 years in the same precinct), but there was a sample ballot posted on the door to the polling place. Oddly, it was printed in yellow despite containing a notice that it is a violation of the Election Code to copy or distribute sample ballots in white or yellow paper. Who made the decision not to send out sample ballots? The State Board of Elections? The party? It would be entirely possible to forget there was a primary today. Who does that help?
Entering the polling place, there is always a poll worker asking if voters know how to use the electronic machines (you have to turn a wheel and then click your selections). I asked if it was possible to cast a blank ballot. She was a bit surprised by the question but then helpfully and honestly responded yes and showed me how to do it. Given the sign on the door and the prohibition against defacing ballots, however, it was unclear how a blank ballot would be counted.
I then went to the registration table. In every other election — and in 15 years I have only missed one primary for a state legislative race — the poll worker asks the voter to state their full legal name and then their address, upon which one presents ID. After the ID is verified, the poll worker calls out a number which reflects the total number of voters certified to that point. The voter is then given a “registration verified” card and sent to another table where a machine prints out the (private) code that the voter has to enter to begin the process with the machine.
Today, no. Rather than having the book fully open, the poll worker — and I did not recognize a single one of them — had it half closed and did not call out the number. So unless the poll watchers are watching carefully, there is no way to know the total number of ballots cast. (The Paulista-looking poll watcher appeared to be reading a Danielle Steel novel and was clearly not paying attention.) Needless to say, I assume that turnout was exceptionally low. But in the past, I’ve still known the number of ballots cast to that point. Again, why the secrecy? The electronic machines are not infallible (I recall an incident from a few elections ago where the machine went haywire, delaying results into the night. That wasn’t fraud, just malfunction, but still.)
All in all, a very surreal and somewhat disturbing, soulless experience. I even had to ask for my “I voted” sticker.
There is a complicated history in Virginia regarding the signature requirements for ballot access including the Dems getting to submit joint petitions in 2008. So it’s not quite as simple as candidates not just getting enough signatures. The law against write-ins needs to be repealed, now. The rules on ballot access need to be reformed, now. The parties have too much control of the elections (see link for a good summary of what happened last year).
View all comments (19) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Quin Hillyer
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/03/06/a-report-from-the-non-election
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Aleck| 3.6.12 @ 4:33PM
I hope you voted for Ron Paul! ;-)
Quin| 3.6.12 @ 4:39PM
Wasn't I. I live in Alabama.
Occam's Tool| 3.6.12 @ 5:24PM
'Bama is quite straightforward to vote in. Lived there seven years. A wonderful state filled with wonderful people. I just hate the summers.
Tom| 3.6.12 @ 5:25PM
I did vote for Dr. Nutjob.....Right now, I feel kinda dirty.
Aleck| 3.6.12 @ 6:54PM
I feel that way every time I vote.
John - TMF| 3.6.12 @ 5:26PM
Our polling place is in our back yard. Nobody there, school going on as usual, no signs, no poll workers, and no me, my sons, or my wife.... nobody to vote for: We are all praying for either Newt or Santorum. Basically because we were denied the "privilege" of actually choosing to vote for one of them.
I have voted in every primary since they started, and was a delegate to several caucuses over the years, including the last Gubernatorial nomination (my son and I were Cuccinelli delegates).
No one called. Nobody asked for precinct captains or campaign chairmen (experience being both over the years). Nobody asked me to put a yard sign up. I was hit up for a big campaign contribution to the RNC, which I promtly shredded...
Nothing.
I hope the turnout is so low that the embarrassment of having run such a sham discolors any value that the odious Mr. Romney gets out of this theft of delegates.
Putrid performance Republican Party of Virginia. Nobody wants to belong to a phony political party. Quinn is right, shades of the old Soviets.
-John - TMF
Tom| 3.6.12 @ 5:37PM
You know, I was really hoping that Virginia would shock the world today by having supporters of EVERY possible Presidential candidate bsides Romney going out to vote for Dr. Nutjob. That includes Democrats who are under the delusion that the Mittster would be Obama's toughest challenge. This is just the kind of totally-under-the radar situation where a relatively small number of people could send this contest off in a direction that hardly anybody would anticipate. The Romneyites would be totally befuddled to explain how Ron Paul could actually beat Romney in a one-on-one contest.
aware| 3.6.12 @ 5:41PM
The "rules" are exactly the same for any candidate. If it is as Byzantine as you seem to believe how did anybody get their name on the ballot?
Are the "rules" different for Paul and Romney than the others?
The truth is that your "pick" didn't have the organizational capacity or the foresight to be able to get their name on the ballot. What does that tell you about how great a "leader" they would be?
Even if your "rules" suck, if everybody has to work under them, what's unfair about that?
It's not a poll worker, whom you felt the need to denigrate, that was too stupid to be able to get a candidate's name on the ballot. It was your boy and his team.
Raeganaut| 3.6.12 @ 5:55PM
This is pathetic..claiming state election laws make Virginia a "Soviet Socialist Republic", when it's the incompetence of certain candidates that is to blame. I thought conservatives believed in personal accountability and don't blame others for their own failures. There should be less whining from the supporters of incompetent candidates who can't organize their campaigns.
John - TMF| 3.6.12 @ 6:16PM
Nether one of you has a clue, or both are on the Romney payroll.
Virginia ballot access depends on cooperation of the County Committees, and is also based on CONGRESSIONAL district distribution.
1. Virginia still does not have stablized Congressional districts. This made it difficult for the various committees to figure out where their districts were.
2. Petitions are impossibly difficult to just pass around. They require that each page be filled out and notarized. This means that experienced petition workers, precinct captains, and campaign workers have to be in place, or existing.
3. The pool of available campaign workers is not just something you manufacture out of thin air. It is really difficult when the two candidates who have basically been running here since 2008, suck all of the available people who know how to work the inside.. away.
The Republican Party of Virginia has been in the Bag for Romney since Bob McDonnell's election to governor, and his floating as a possible/probable VP nominee as early as 2010.
RuPaul has a dedicated long term permanent Ronulan/Paulbot organization. Not one of them thinks, they are just like little anti-Semitic, isolationist Drones... and do their master's bidding like starlings swarming in the twilight.
Any candidate trying to get any traction or help from the official party channels was SOL, from the 2008 nominating convention on.
Won't wash... I live here.. been involved in Virginia politics since 1988. This is the worst year that I have ever seen.
Quin and his correspondent are correct. Virginia's ballot access laws need to be reformed, along with its meddlesome primary rules. No state government should be interfering in any political party's nominating process.
The Pledge:
Willard Milton Romney is a Limousine Liberal Democrat Masquerading as a Republican; therefore I WILL NOT vote for him, EVER!
(The polls close in 45 minutes and are 5 minutes away... I am not budging. I have nobody to vote for.)
-TMF
Tom| 3.6.12 @ 6:54PM
"The Pledge:
Willard Milton Romney is a Limousine Liberal Democrat Masquerading as a Republican; therefore I WILL NOT vote for him, EVER!"
As a fellow resident of Virginia I take the same pledge.
aware| 3.6.12 @ 7:06PM
"I am not budging. I have nobody to vote for..."
Get used to it cause you'll feel the same way in Nov.
And the "rules" are the same for all, so your claim is nothing but sour grapes. The Virginia primary is the only one that has the real choice as it should be, big government vs small government. Nothing else matters.
The other 2 proven losers are just slightly less big government than the Borg's approved as your leader KenDoll, but nothing in the actual laws they voted for and passed tells me you could call them small government.
Prester John| 3.6.12 @ 8:12PM
Baloney. While it is true that the congressional district lines had not yet been finalized it was perfectly acceptable to turn in the petitions by county.
And while you can argue that the congressional district and county committees could've done more, it was the campaigns and even more so the individual voters who were so adamantly against Romney (I still haven't met a grassroots Republican who supports him) and were supposedly supporting Perry, Bachman, Santorum, Huntsman, or Gingrich who sat on their asses and expected someone else to do the grunt work or waited for someone to tell them what to do.
All the campaigns knew (or should've known) what the rules were and anyone with the slightest bit of curiosity could've easily gone to the state board of elections website to see what the requirements were and download the petition form. They could've started collecting signatures back on 1 July rather than scrambling, like Gingrich was, in late November and December to get the required number of signatures.
I was at numerous local GOP events in northern Virginia in Sept/Oct/Nov collecting signatures (something I had never done before) for Herman Cain and there was no one, and I mean no one from another campaign other than at one event in late November where I ran into some Gingrich people who were playing catch up. Santorum, Perry, Bachman, and Huntsman were all MIA for the entire 5-1/2 months when they could've been collecting signatures.
I would note that Cain workers (who other than Ron Paul supporters were the only people I saw who showed any kind of passion or excitement for their candidate) spoke with many county committee chairmen asking for permission to go to meetings to gather signatures and there was never an objection and in fact we were welcomed with open arms.
On election day in November, which one would think campaigns would recognize as the perfect opportunity to get the signatures of registered voters, I was at my precinct (one of the largest in northern Virginia) and got 100 signatures for Cain without even trying. Another volunteer in another county near me got over 200 that day. Do you think any one else who hated the idea of Romney being the nominee was out there in numbers getting signatures for their candidate?
Nope.
Sorry, no one is to blame for having only two choices on the ballot this time around other than Republican voters who spent a heck of a lot of time whining about Romney and the "establishment GOP" but never got around to spending the time and effort (other than the RP folks of course) to get some other names on the ballot.
John - TMF| 3.6.12 @ 10:41PM
yeah... sure...
Less than 260,000 votes total in the entire Commonwealth.
Real victory, Romney bought it, and the machine did what it always does... jump for the highest bidder.
There were very few events, there were fewer petitions passed around, and darned few folks involved, especially down the valley, and across the Piedmont.
Romney bought up the help, the energy, and the impulse, and he bought it up early... like since 2006 early.
I worked the 2000 nominating fight for W. and then the campaign.. there was more energy and excitement in the county then, than their was in the entire Commonwealth this year. Heck even 2004 had more going on.
Cain wasn't on the ballot. Northern Virginia, is not the entire state (contrary to what the refugees from Yankee tax hells in Fairfax think, anyway) .
Virginia's Primary Ballot access rules are odious and difficult. They were crafted by the Democrats in the 1970's so that they could manage their political party from the legislative halls in Richmond. The GOP stayed away from primaries for years, but after Ollie North skunked J Marshall (loyalty is negotiable just ask Foghorn Leghorn Warner) Coleman. The RPV decided that it was better to let the Dems choose our candidates with open primaries.
I'd love to say that the Dems chose Romney, it would make me feel better. But they didn't 4-watt bulb brained delusional go along to get along "Republicans" did.
Romney is a disaster, and stands a better than even chance of being the last Republican President... If he can get elected after the pasting he'll receive. If he loses, he will almost assured of being the last Republican nominee.
Cao,
TMF
- Thankfully Santorum has a fighting chance. Newt needs to fold his tent, shake hands with Santorum, and have his delegates commit that way for the convention.
Fred V.| 3.6.12 @ 6:40PM
Voted today for Santorum here in Vermont.
Yes a Vermont Republican does exist.
Tom| 3.6.12 @ 8:57PM
Good job for helping to keep the Mittster at 40 percent in Vermont.
toadold| 3.6.12 @ 7:13PM
So what happens if someone besides Romney wins the nomination and they win the Presidency? Will the Virginia Republican establishment have any influence with the winner at all? They could face severe punishment. Unexpected payback can be the worst kind of hell. Imagine a brokered convention and Gingrich/Perry sitting in the White house. Long odds against but possible.
Oldefarte| 3.7.12 @ 10:53AM
Re Quin's article on the N.O. Saints:
[NYT] '....Still, the reaction of players since the N.F.L. revealed its investigation — including those of Kurt Warner and Brett Favre, who were named by the league as targets of the Saints — indicates that most believe the incentives are a routine part of the game.....'
Oldefarte| 3.7.12 @ 11:01AM
I will vote for Newt next week. If he fails to obtain the nomination, I will vote for the Republican as opposed to the Socialist. In both instances, I will honorably and gladly produce my state drivers license with my photo attached as proof positive of my identification, since I as an American citizen want to prove that it is I [and no one else that is committing fraud by voting in my place] who is voting [but of course I'm a Republican and not a Democrat, so that expains why I wish to do so proudly]!!!!!!!!!!