I ran into problems when I tried voting today

Lizze and I went to cast our ballots in the Ohio Primary Election today. I don’t remember ever voting in a Primary before but I’m much more politically motivated and recognize the importance of my vote.

Here’s what happened when I went to cast my ballot. I know there are many people who may find themselves in a similar place and I want to make sure you have your voice heard.

https://youtu.be/I6PUAloJMzo

Here’s what happened.

When I went into the poll, I was asked if I was a registered Republican, which I am. I explained that The didn’t want to vote Republican though. Not having voted in a Primary before, or at least in a long time, I didn’t know that I would be giving a ballot for Republican candidates only.

I realized this when I put the card into the machine and only Republican candidates were shown. In hindsight it makes sense but if you’re unfamiliar with the process, it can be confusing.

I called an election worker over and asked for help. I explained that while I’m a registered Republican, I didn’t want to vote Republican at this point in time. Apparently, they’d never run into this before and I’m not sure if it’s because people were afraid to say anything or it just hadn’t happened before.

Anyway, they didn’t know how to invalidate my current ballot and then reissue the correct one.

If this happens to you, you must allow the voting machine to time out. It takes about a minute but you’ll see an option to reject the ballot. Once that’s done, you need to get that ballot reissued so you can vote for the party and candidates you are wanting to support. This is where I ran into problems.

They were unable to reissue me a ballot because the system showed that I had already voted,even though I hadn’t.

It took them about forty-five minutes to figure this out but it turns out, they need to process it as a soiled ballot. I assume this is more from the era of paper ballots because paper ballots are susceptible to damage. If a paper ballot were damaged or soiled it would be invalidated and subsequently reissued.

It’s the same process, even with electronic voting. It seems really weird and counterintuitive but that’s the process that must happen in order to reissue the correct ballot.

I was eventually allowed to vote and do so on the Democratic ballot.

I was surprised how much this threw everyone off and how long it took to figure it out. I’d also like to say that I never felt pressure to guilty for having requested the correct ballot. The workers were great and even gave me extra stickers. ☺

Voting is absolutely your responsibility as an American Citizen.

Voting has always been important to me personally, but in the advent of Donal Trump and a Republican party that enables his dangerous, outrageously discraceful behavior, I’m even more motivated to have my voice heard than ever before.

Get out and vote. I don’t even care who you vote for because that’s your choice. Just vote.

Rob Gorski

Full time, work from home single Dad to my 3 amazing boys. Oh...and creator fo this blog. :-)
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Travis Mitchell

Thank you!! For what you may ask? For being a decent human being and recognizing that the GOP has sunk to new lows and does not represent true, honest, conservative values any longer and is undeserving of your support.

Ohio primary rules must be different than Colorado’s primary rules (and even those have changed a lot in the quarter of a century I’ve been voting). In Coloroado, until this last primary, you were on my allowed to vote in the primary of the party you are registered with which meant that Independents and Unaffiliated voters (like me) were simply SOL. When I first started voting (prior to the 1992 Presidential Election), you were allowed to change your party registration the day of the primary at the polling place to allow you to vote in another party’s primary (or any party’s primary if you were Unaffiliated). You could revert the following day, but you still had to be registered with a party to vote in their primary. At some point (probably during the 4 years I lived in Louisiana), the rules changed and you had to register with the party you intended to vote with for the primary 30 days in advance of the primary. For mail in ballots, the County Clerk would mail you the primary ballot for the party you were affiliate with (again leaving Unaffiliated and Independent voters in the cold), and then this year they changed the rules again and Unaffiliated and Independent voters received ballots for both Dems and Repubs, but could only return one. If they returned both then both were invalidated.

Anyway…. Good on you for voting and encouraging others to do the same.

BeckyW

Yes. Somehow I’ve always known that primaries are open. And I have crossed to the GOP ballot when I liked someone running on that side. I’ve always found the poll workers to be super helpful and they never betray any partisanship. But you’re right, it’s best to just request whether you want to vote Democratic or Republican.

Anyway, I knew I had to vote so I could help make sure Dennis Kucinich didn’t get the Democratic nomination. Richard Cordray seems like a very solid choice. The Ohio Democratic Party ran Ed Fitzgerald last time without, it seems, doing enough proper vetting. At least they have a good candidate now.