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My Birthday Wish For Folks In Usa!


Samrc

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The 2nd is my birthday. It is also election day.

 

Please give me a great birthday gift (been a rough year!).

 

All I ask is that you VOTE on my birthday!

It's a wonderful privilege to choose our leaders. It is really necessary that we ALL speak our minds by voting, not just a few folks that find time in their busy day.

 

-Samantha

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Thanks folks.

 

BUT I want MORE votes!!!

 

In 2000 I ran a polling precinct in Florida and was one of the few that got a PERFECT score for no errors. No hanging or dangling chads, no lost ballots etc in my precinct! This is the first major election in 12 years that I have not worked the election in some capacity. Feels VERY strange indeed.

 

-Samantha

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Happy Birthday Samantha - watch the tv for my birthday gift... mine and millions of others that is. I'm definitely voting and only life-threatening illness could stop me.

 

By the way, I'm in Monroe County, Florida in Key West and we have a great system here. No chads, dimples, etc.... we just fill in little circles with ink and *poof* it's a vote. The optical scanners are so much better than the other methods I'm surprised the whole state doesn't go with them.

 

Anywho, EVERYONE THAT CAN SHOULD GO VOTE!!!!!! I know who I'd rather everyone vote for, but I can deal a whole lot better with the ones voting for the "other guy" than those who don't vote.

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Anywho, EVERYONE THAT CAN SHOULD GO VOTE!!!!!! I know who I'd rather everyone vote for, but I can deal a whole lot better with the ones voting for the "other guy" than those who don't vote.

 

Agree 100%!

 

In my area (Orange County) not all precincts were clean the last time. There were assorted strange errors made. We use optical scanners also, and we connect the split arrow <--- --- using a black heavy pen. If there are errors on the card (as in filling arrow, voting, for 2 candidates in a particular race) the card is rejected and turned in for a new one. If the card can't be completed properly by the third try, you are done and the vote does not count. In my precinct, when someone messed up 2 cards, I walked with them to the booth and would verbally assist so that the 3rd card was clean. (It is an option that not all clerks choose to do).

 

I REALLY like the system we have here. Besides having the quick computer print-out at the end of the evening, we had actual paper votes to back up the computer. The new touch screens are causing all kinds of problems because there is no documentation to prove the validity of the vote.

 

It will take a lot of time to stand in line to vote this year, but well worth it in my opinion.

 

-Samantha

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Anywho, EVERYONE THAT CAN SHOULD GO VOTE!!!!!! I know who I'd rather everyone vote for, but I can deal a whole lot better with the ones voting for the "other guy" than those who don't vote.

Sorry I disagree, if they don't know who or why they are voting they should just stay home.

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As a citizen of this free country it is our responsibility to get informed! We maintain our freedoms through the right to vote.

 

I know that many people are lazy when it comes to this type of thing, but in this day and age, we have so many options to educate ourselves: tv interview (not necessarily ads!) and programs (even most local stations try to discuss the local issues), written press (newspaper and magazines), 24 hour cable news, radio, internet, churches and civic groups, rallies, and so many more.

 

There's no excuse now for not voting on the important topics! In the state of Florida, besides the major races, this year we have some 8 possible amendments to our state constitution. I hate to think that changes that could radically change our state are brought in only by a tiny majority of people.

 

And if you don't vote, you shouldn't be allowed to complain if you don't like the results. Drives me nuts when someone wah wah wah then you find out they didnt' bother to vote.....

 

-Samantha

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Sorry I disagree, if they don't know who or why they are voting they should just stay home.

My approach is a little more hard-nosed. If they don't know the candidates and the issues then I think they should just move to another country where that's decided for them so they won't have to worry about it. I can think of no excuse to be uninformed besides apathy.

 

Edit: spelling - duh.

Edited by TCH-Jim
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Sorry I disagree, if they don't know who or why they are voting they should just stay home.

My approach is a little more hard-nosed. If they don't know the candidates and the issues then I think they should just move to another country where that's decided for them so they won't have to worry about it. I can think of no excuse to be uninformed besides apathy.

 

Edit: spelling - duh.

I agree, so why are there so many undecided voters still out there?

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I happened to be an undecided voter. And, I think I am in the minority because I actually have bothered to research both candidates extensively (which i have found really hard because of the abundance of biased news we have in this country).

 

Guys, I'm really in a bind. I can not honestly say that, in respect to the presidential election, I feel comfortable voting for either of the candidates. I really think that this is a sad thing. I hate having to vote for the lesser of the two evils. I did my part and voted early in the primaries for the candidate that I believed would be a good one, but he did not make it. So what am I left to do? vote for a candidate I don't like because i like the opposing candidate even less?

 

I've come to realize that the two main political parties here in the United States are two different cuts from the same meat. So what am i left to do...vote for the libertarian party? A wasted vote? Of vote for the two other parties that have produced inferior candidates for the upcoming four years? Or not vote at all?

 

I'm not a fan of people saying that many voters don't vote because they're too lazy to research the candidates. I think many people don't vote because they do not feel that either candidate represents their beliefs and values.

 

woah....politics sure do bring out alot of emotions in people!

 

All in all i believe in the US and I believe in the political process....I just think we as a people need to do a better job of looking beyond what the papers and movie stars say about the candidates and pick out the good ones from the begining.

 

-Sam

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I just think we as a people need to do a better job of looking beyond what the papers and movie stars say about the candidates and pick out the good ones from the begining.

 

(Applause is heard) Thumbs Up

 

Unfortunately, in many races I have voted against (a party or ideology) rather than for an individual. Shame. But sometimes that's been my only option. But at least I did what I could to speak up.

 

This year it seems the presidential race is polarizing people forcing them to take a stand. Less undecided than in most years based on my own discussions with folks locally and long distance. And yes....tons of emotions invested.

 

-Samantha

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My 2 cents...(list isn´t finished yet)

 

The TCH Government

President: Bill

Vice President: Mike

Dep. for finances: Michelle

Dep. for IT: Mike J, Rick

Dep. for Foregin affairs: Andy, Raul

Dep. for human rights: Lisa

Dep. for animal rights: Don

Dep. for education: Jim, Bruce

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samporras, I apologize if my words were unclear... I did not mean to imply that everyone that doesn't vote is lazy. Indeed there is a large number of folks in your situation as well. I still think they should vote even if it is for the lesser of two evils because someone 40% for your values is better than someone 30% for your values... but I could understand if they choose not to vote. It's the truly lazy-non-voters that I think should move.

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Jim, I agree.

 

I have no problem with folks that have opinions that differ from mine on election issues. That's cool. Or even those that have religious objections to the process and will not vote (ex: jehovah witness) as that is one of the freedoms of this country. But to those that just sit on the sidelines because they don't have time, or can't be bothered, etc.... I have very little patience.

 

If a candidate does not fit your criteria but he is a bit closer than the other one, IMHO it is better to vote for the better one as he is more likely to support something you do want.

 

I work with all registered voters except one. She and her husband say that their votes don't matter anyway (Hey do you remember 2000?) and that they do not want to take the time to stand in line. Busy people you know.

 

My response to them is that they have the right to not vote. But then just don't complain to me that the sales tax increased, or that other fees were added in the county, state, etc. If you don't take part in the process, you shouldn't complain!

 

-Samantha

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Samrc,

 

I agree with your statement that "no vote, no say".

 

However, this is America. The constitution does not say "No vote, No say".

 

I think it says - Article I

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

So in summation, I can not agree with you on this point.

 

Bill

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If we do not make a choice through the power of our vote, choices will be made for us over which we may very well have no power when we want or need it.

 

It saddens me that, in the greatest democracy on this planet, we have such low voter turn-out in our elections - national, state and local.

 

Bill - I agree, there is no law that says No Vote - No Say, but more often than not the people I hear complaining the loudest turn out to be people who didn't vote.

 

An election is our opportunity to tell the people we employ to conduct the "people's business" whether or not they're doing the job we want done. It's our chance to hire, rehire or fire our employees.

 

Every single American citizen gets the same opportunity to make a change if they don't like what's happening, so I have to agree with Sami with a slight twist - No Vote, No Whining. When you had the chance to do something you didn't so don't complain about it now. On the other side of the coin - your vote is your chance to affirm those in office and assure their re-election. If you didn't get out there and support your guy, don't cry in your beer now.

 

Voter apathy is a far greater threat to this country than any less-than-perfect fit between a candidate and office, or a candidate and his normative belief system, will ever be. Ours is a representative government. Choosing not to cast your ballot is a form of voting, you just don't know for sure who's going to be representing what interests in the halls of government when all the smoke clears.

 

I'll be voting for my candidates and issues tomorrow, but I'm praying for the largest voter turn-out in the history of this country. That more than anything will be Democracy in action.

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Bill, you are totally correct in the law and I am glad you posted it here. And in principal I strongly agree with it. I would fight hard against changes to free speech laws, including if someone tried to pass a bill saying that if you didn't vote you can't complain. Thumbs Up

 

HOWEVER, in real life, it really gets under my skin to hear constant spouting of complaints (whining, as Beth calls it) from people that then turn around and say they refuse to vote, or can't be bothered to vote. I have heard it DAILY from a coworker for the last two years. I support the right to whine, but please do not come in my immediate space and flap gums at me when you aren't willing to try to do anything about it. Go whine to someone else. Yuck! I feel that way even when I have the same complaint as the non-voter! My feelings have gotten much stronger on this over the years, eventually making it my pet-peave. So I have to go back to my earlier statement:

But then just don't complain to me...

 

I too hope and pray for high turn-out. I have been excited to hear so many people have voted early in this area.

 

-Samantha

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Polls opened here at 6:30am I was at my location at 7:10am and I was voter #23. Don't know how many are in my precinct but most of them generally vote. And this is the first time in my voting history that I had to show a photo ID. I was not offended at all by that and think it should be manditory to show proof you are who you say you are.

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Our polls are 7am-7pm (if in line at 7pm when polls close, you can still vote even if it takes hours to complete the line).

 

I was in in line at 6:35 this morning and voted at 8:10. There were about 100 folks in line behind me when I left.

 

:( :) :lol: HIGH TURNOUT!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

-Samantha

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And this is the first time in my voting history that I had to show a photo ID. I was not offended at all by that and think it should be manditory to show proof you are who you say you are.

I had my voter registration card with me and that's all they asked for. Lady in front of me didn't have her card so they asked for her driver's license.

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Can we talk about how ridiculous the P Diddy's (or Puff Daddy...the rapper) campaign is Vote or Die! ??????

 

I mean come on. It's a good principle to try to get young voters to vote, but i'm not sure I want the youth of America following a campaign like Vote or Die. And I absolutely HATE when movie stars vote for a certain candidate just because it's "trendy".....

 

I really think Hollywood should stay out of politics.

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P Diddy's (or Puff Daddy...the rapper) campaign is Vote or Die!

I believe in getting the voters out to the precincts, but not into scaring or threatening them into going! Too extreme.

 

-Samantha

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P Diddy's (or Puff Daddy...the rapper) campaign is Vote or Die!

I believe in getting the voters out to the precincts, but not into scaring or threatening them into going! Too extreme.

 

 

While not fond of the P Daddy approach it is the only way to get the message across - from him - to his target audience, his listeners. Any other less "extreme" attempt from him simply wouldn't work and his target wouldn't pay it any mind.

 

What I do like about it is that the message does not endorse anyone or anything except the right to vote.

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Well my vote is cast. I stood in line for 1 and a half hours,in the rain I might add, so I could vote.

When I got out of the Army I said there is 2 things I will never do again-stand in line or say sir to anyone. For 25 years I have lived up to that promise to myself. Today I stood in line for more than 5 min. The promise about saying sir is still intact.

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I only had to wait 10 minutes, but I went to the polling place before work, so it was still pretty early.

 

Plus, the polling place was half a block away. ;) I couldn't even use laziness as an excuse not to vote.

Edited by TCH-MikeJ
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This morning at about 7:30 the line was out the building and across the parking lot. When I took care of some other business and came back at about 9:30 the line was down so my mom and I could get inside and vote. They were almost back to the door again by the time we finished voting.

 

Everyone in my office has voted and I'm seeing a wonderful number of "I voted" stickers on people's shirts.

 

The elections supervisor this morning was estimating an 80% voter turn out for my county which is awesome!!!! Yay Florida!!!

(now if we can just count the things properly. ;))

 

Even if the "other guy" wins, I'm happy so many came out to vote. As for not voting for the lesser of 2 evils, have you ever noticed that 'vote' and 'veto' are the same letters? I see it as a vote for the lesser evil is a veto of the worst candidate.

 

About no vote - no say... Why is it that the loudest whiners are the ones that won't do anything about the problem - in any situation from President of the United States right down to the amout of trash on the sidewalk by their house. Like the commercial with the running faucet - it's good to take a stand on something you see as a problem but by all means, do something about it!!!

 

The next few weeks will be interesting with all the lawyers out there watching the election, eh?

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This is an exciting election.

 

Far more so this year than many in the past with the possibility of court challenges, lost ballets, and other potential problems. Of course, living in a state that caused problems last time adds a bit of spice ;) .

 

We've had some sneaky tricks down here (by BOTH sides of the isle) including some recorded phone calls (like those from celebrities usually left on message machines) from a few college kids that said "Remember your voting schedule this year! Registered voters with this party () affilliation votes on Tuesday, while this party () will be voting Wednesday." Naughty

 

Curtis thanks for breaking your own rule for standing in line. Your effort is appreciated by all of us!

 

 

WE HAVE THE FIRST CHALLENGE.... PENNSYLVANNIA HAS SOME VOTES THAT WILL NOT BE COUNTED UNTIL TOMORROW MORNING DUE TO A RESTRAINING ORDER! Let's hope it's the only one and it does not impact the final results!

 

-Samantha

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I am so pleased with the massive voter turnout! How wonderful to get so many people involved in the election process. That's a great gift we gave ourselves.

 

-Samantha

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So, how was the election day in the U.S?

According to swedish media it was a real mess.

Nah. The mess is the outcome. :lol:

No the mess was the process, so we are not going to discuss the rest of it. TCH does not normally allow discussions on politics, religion or any other controversial topics. So if the topic turns into anything than a topic about voting, which means no "why I voted for...." or anything along that lines or I will close this topic. I also don't want to hear about your freedom of speech, we have rules and they will be followed. I'm not trying to step on anyones toes or ego, I just want to put this out on the table before it gets to the point that I have to close this thread.

 

Now that all of that is out of the way. Thomas, I'm not the best person to explain this so offer this quote.

The cause of the problem is that the election was not a single event but rather 51 elections by the 50 US states and the District of Columbia, each according to its own rules and regulations. Indeed, within these 51 authorities, individual counties have a degree of responsibility for organising, collating and counting the vote.

 

It is remarkable that in a country such as the United States where so many aspects of life are homogenised, where a city in the south-west will have the familiar slew of chain stores and chain restaurants that match a city, say, in Maine, there is no standardised procedure either in terms of the way people cast their votes, or in the way that vote is counted.

 

One more thing I did not stand in those long lines and vote, I voted early ;)

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One more thing I did not stand in those long lines and vote, I voted early :P

I voted early too, last friday, but still had to stand in line for nearly two hours :). But it was nice just sitting back yesterday and watching the whole thing knowing I had already done my duty.

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TCH-DICK, glad you clarified the rules, and also glad to keep the "politics" and sides out of the post as that was not my intent when I made the thread.

 

Thomas as he mentioned, each county has it's own responsibility to monitor and train individuals for the voting precincts and choose the equipment that will be used. They set the hours of voting.

 

Many different forms of voting are being employed. Absentee and early allow people to vote on a day other than election day. A few drastically different types of equipment being used are: new touch computer screens (no paper trail but easy to see and use), paper cards that you fill in circles with black dot or draw a line to fill in the arrow that are fed into a scanner for fast readout, and even old-style punch cards that a hole is punched to push out the perfororated spaces beside the candidate's name. (This style caused problems in 2000 because not every voter pushed a hole all the way through the paper causing a "chad", a chip of paper to hang onto the back of the ballot card. Manual counting of these is a nightmare.)

 

The budget for the equipment and training is limited by the resources of the community so sometimes new equipment is only purchased to replace part of the equipment. This means that some counties use more than one method to count votes.

 

We are also a very large country. Voting on the west coat is still active while the east coast has already closed. Some tv, internet and radio reporting can be confusing because of partial information being reported.

 

In my area, the lines were long, but once inside, the voting precinct was organized and went pretty well. Some folks have difficulty at a precinct if they recently moved, or have just registered for the first time, or the signature has changed from the registration (you broke your hand, etc). And in a country the size of US, how can you not have a few isolated glitches in the system?

 

The best way to fix the problem is to standardize the equipment, tie it centrally, etc. But then you are asking for a whopping $$ cost and who gets to pick the standard? Who gets to pay for it?

 

All in all, considering the vast diversity of the equipment, polling places and times it is really amazing that we have results as quickly as we do!

 

-Samantha

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Almost 60% of the eligible people voted - that's awesome! I am very pleased that there was a quick decision - we did not need another case like 2000! Everyone I know and saw from the candidates to the voters have been civil and it was great to see that. There were reports of people being nasty and even some here going to jail for stealing signs out of yards but those were isolated cases.

 

In our county we have the fill-in-the-circle type balots and we had everything counted by 8:30. That's pretty good for a county that's over 100 miles long! Too bad everyone doesn't use the same machine, whichever it is.

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