It’s official, my vote was not counted.
I registered to vote within 30 days of the election. If I had gone to early voting, then I could have registered and voted at the same time. But I filled out the form online when I changed the address on my driver’s license… therefore, my vote didn’t count.
As the guy in charge said, “I won’t tell you can’t vote, but most likely it won’t be counted.”
Reflecting on this for almost 30 seconds. I really don’t understand how any of these voter registration laws are supposed to make fraud more difficult. First, I wasn’t required to provide proof of ID to register to vote. Just to vote. Since the ID must match the registration card, how difficult is it to fill out a new voters card with the correct name (or any name for that matter).
Why do we need voter registration cards in the first place? The polling place workers scanned the code on my driver’s license. And then they compared (or would have in my case) to a piece of paper that was completed with no ID required. How much simpler would it be to just have a link to the list of registered drivers (and other state issued ID cards)? When someone votes, then a box is checked in the DMV database and that ID can’t be used to vote anymore. The data on the ID card can be easily compared to the DMV data (it should be the same) and the picture is checked by a poll worker.
Since the ID card has the correct address, the appropriate voting form is automatically applied to the voting machines (which I absolutely loathe… I’d rather vote on the internet across an unsecure link than a voting machine), and you vote. Done.
I’m sure there are some reasons why this process wouldn’t be perfect, but I also suspect that 3-4 reasonably intelligent people could think about it for longer than 30 seconds and come up with a really good process that is both relatively easy AND secure. Having been a reviewer for an election, I have no faith in the voting machines.
