US/NC/voting

North Carolina is stealing votes
said, on 2008-11-05:

I am a North Carolina resident. I had been away from home for the past 6 weeks and have been without Internet access, so I was not able to vote early, nor was I in touch with the electoral changes NC put in place for THIS ELECTION! I needed to extend my trip, but was determined not to miss the opportunity to finally be able to cast a vote for someone I really believe in, as opposed to the usual choice of between the witch and the devil! I drove 8 hrs. in the rain, stopping only once, arriving at my voting place with just 25 mins to spare, and being absolutely stunned when handed a slip of paper stating that voting the straight party ticket would not register a vote for the presidency - SINCE WHEN? I verified with the election officials that this is not business as usual! This was obviously done in response to the instruction to new voters to vote the straight ticket.

I have never voted the straight ticket, even if I cast all my votes for the same party. And when I instructed new voters on the voting I encouraged them to never vote the straight ticket, because it's very important to study the candidates and to know who you are voting for, especially in the primary election. Now that we have so many new voters, I embraced the suggestion of voting the ticket to avoid confusion. Well didn't North Carolina find a way to try to circumvent this so-called democracy by robbing it's own citizens of their right to cast their votes! This reprehensible act by a state, furthers the cause for federalizing the electoral process.

We run all around the world pointing fingers, spouting democracy, watching other countries elections, making statements about other countries election abuses, threatening sanctions over human rights abuses, but who's watching the watcher? We need to invite - no, insist that the United Nations watch our elections!

Woozle responds
There has been some comment about this, and about the fact that this procedure is backwards from every other state (where straight-party also selects the president).

It does seem somewhat deceptive; if the presidential race had hinged on NC's vote, I'm sure there would be considerable interest in investigating. As it is, though, Obama won without our help, and any straight-party votes counted as expected.

We should probably look at getting this straightened out before the next election, however. Oversight from outside seems like a good idea in general, for the entire US, at least until we can feel confident in our election process again; there were quite a few reports of irregularities here and in other states, which might have been enough to flip the vote had Obama's lead not been so overwhelming.

--Woozle 19:09, 5 November 2008 (UTC)