First Election Day Reports from Citizen Journalists

First Election Day Reports from Citizen Journalists

The following reports were received via the Breitbart News ELECTION TIP LINE (noreply@breitbart.com) as of 1:30 a.m. EST, Election Day, November 6. Note that you should not mess with Texas yard signs:

California

I walked my neighborhood and only saw one Obama sign. Four years ago they were EVERYWHERE!  

I live in the EXTREMELY liberal enclave of Silicon Valley, CA.

Florida

1. It is Monday night before the election and as I returned home I was surprised to see people with Romney/Ryan signs stretched out for 3/4 mile along Courtney Campbell Causeway connecting Tampa & Clearwater. Hundreds of people were on the side of the road with the signs.  

Cars were honking their support, it sounded like a Super Bowl celebration instead of the night before an election.   

This is completely the opposite of the 2008 election. The positive energy was infectious.

2. This is about Absentee Ballots in Osceola County Florida, where I, my husband, and daughter are registered voters. 

I am very angry and frustrated because my daughter who is currently in a Midwest state, a registered Republican in Osceola County, will not be able to vote because she never received an absentee ballot, though I requested it twice, and confirmed it in the system both times. According to the records, it was mailed twice (the second time was after I notified them that it hadn’t arrived). Interesting that she has, however, received plenty of junk mail from candidates. I called the Elections office today to see if they would offer her an option, but the only one is for me to, with her authorization, go to the Elections office in person, pick up her ballot,
somehow get it to her and get it back by 7 pm Tuesday night. Impossible. 

My husband, on the other hand, a registered independent, has been traveling overseas. He didn’t receive his ballot either. But he did receive a piece of election junk mail, a dead give-away that the address entered was
correct. His ballot was mailed on 9/21, according to the records in the database. Fortunately, I had done a LOT of research as to what an overseas person can do in order to vote, so we printed off a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballow (FWAB) and faxed it in…I just wonder how many other people would go through this kind of effort and frustration to vote when they are overseas? If I hadn’t done the research and been there to locate the documents online, my husband most likely would not have voted.

I’m glad my husband was able to vote, but I’m very frustrated, angry, and indignant that my daughter has been denied the right to vote. Why would she receive other mail, but not the ballot? Why didn’t she receive at least ONE of the TWO ballots which were reportedly mailed to the correct address? It just doesn’t make sense.

Hawaii

Voted Saturday, and the line (with more than a dozen voting machines) took over an hour to get through, and it was getting longer as we were in it.  A group of evangelical Christians was behind me having a conversation about how good people need to have their voices heard and that they could no longer sit out the vote (conversation was referencing McCain, who did not excite the evangelical Christian wing of the Republican party).

West side is more conservative than much of Oahu though, because a lot of the population runs small businesses for employment, and the current administration has made their lives very hard with the anti-business policies and other mandates (Obamacare).

Hawaii is also heavy Democrat, but there is a large Mormon population on the island that is normally not real active in politics.  This year it is quite different.  I think it is possible that Romney does quite a bit better than expected here (but Obama will win the state), with an outside chance Linda Lingle wins the U.S. Senate race by the narrowest of margins.

Indiana

I voted early. When I was led to the voting machine and it was readied it had already voted for me!  A straight Democrat vote when I am a registered Republican. The women informed me that the machine I was using had been doing that all day. I suggested they find a new one that wasn’t already rigged.

All of the people in line were excited and all were talking Romney. Hopefully they all caught the mistake.


New York

On Oct. 27, I trained to be a paid poll worker in NYC with the Board of Elections. It was one of the worst training experiences I have ever had. The trainer was like a 10th Grader trying to train bored and unruly 8th
Graders. Today, I still hadn’t received my poll assignment location by mail. I spent four hours calling their office on Varick Street.

No answer, and voicemails were full, including the voicemail box for poll workers. I made 50-75 calls or more. No one was picking up phones there. When someone did pick up, I told her I had been calling for four hours, and would she please not send me to voicemail. “I can’t promise that,” she said, “That’s all by chance.”

I asked her to at least write down my name and number before transferring me, and she said, “That’s not how we do things here.” Then she sent me to a voicemail. I left a voicemail and then continued to call, hoping for a live person who was willing to help me.

Hours later, I finally got another live person, who tried to get anyone in the office to speak with me. He was unsuccessful. He was apologetic, and gave me an address where I can show up tomorrow as a stand-by worker, a location used to dispatch workers on short notice to polling stations who need them. I suggested that perhaps the hurricane had interrupted their operation. He said that was not the case, and said there was no excuse for my not hearing back from anyone.

I left voicemails for at least three people at the Board of Elections today. None of them have returned my call…

Oregon

I live in Bend, Oregon, USA.

We vote by mail, exclusively. I voted 2 weeks ago, the day my ballot arrived.

I returned both of our ballots, mine and my wife’s, personally to a drop box at a county office.

We were VERY ENTHUSIASTIC, and so are all of our families and friends.

Only one Obama vote among all we know.

Loves the grape Kool-Aid.

You can call me Oregontea. Everyone else does.

Texas

1. In Houston, Harris County: 

Our household applied for “Mail-In Ballots” for elderly voters. 3 applications. 

In each case there was no response to first requests. Also, in each case, a mail-in ballot was delivered in one day upon the 2nd request.  Every request generates a ballot, whether 1st, 2nd, whatever.  

What was done with ballots produced upon 1st request? No answers given by Harris County so far.

2. Woodlake neighborhood of San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

There are many enthusiastic Romney supporters in my neighborhood. Only one person was openly brave enough to post an Obama/Biden sign. There was one Romney/Ryan sign vandalized. Evidently, the perpetrators picked the wrong house as they had a gun pointed at them in the middle of their crime, and fled. 

Other than that, no real incidents in the neighborhood itself.

Today I did overhear one Obama supporter as I picked my daughter up from school. She was speaking on the phone and stated to the other party: “I can’t wait for Obama to just win this thing. I am so tired of being nice to these people. After this is done, that’s it, my gloves come off and they gonna pay.”

Conservatives are pretty enthusiastic. Independents and liberals seem to be tired of the whole election process. Those are just my observations.

Virginia

We live 2 houses from the election precinct in a very democratic part of our city, Richmond, VA.

Walking the dogs tonight we noticed that here were NO Obama/Biden/Kaine signs near the polling place. 

(I am not talking about people’s yards, which do have Dem signs, but about signs within the allowed margin of the polling place). 

This is the home district of candidate Tim Kaine; and in 2008 there were many many Obama/Biden signs.

Makes you wonder about the vaunted “ground game” in Va.

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