Voting in Oklahoma 2008

Published by in digitalstorytelling, politics on November 4th, 2008

I snapped 25 photos this morning when I voted before I drove downtown into work, and recorded a few thoughts about our voting system in Oklahoma and my experiences voting in a VoiceThread with five of those photos tonight.

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On this day..

4 Comments »
  • http://allanahk.edublogs.org/ AllanahK

    We have our own vote on Saturday for a general election where we get everything over with on the same day- voting for parliament- no separate vote for leader of the nation.

    I always wondered why America votes mid-week when everyone should be at work. Doesn’t it make things difficult to get time off work to go and vote.

    In NZ we vote on a Saturday when more people have time off and don’t have to get time off or muck about.

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    I am not sure but I suspect the reason for the date is just tradition. It would make more sense to vote on a Saturday! Employers are supposed to give employees 2 hours off during the day to be able to vote.

    I am sure there is plenty of “mucking about” that happens on election day around here. :-)

  • http://musicmiddleschoolweb20.blogspot.com Susan Hurst

    Hi Wes!

    I saw you across the lobby using your iPhone to take pictures. I live in Precinct 359. My husband and I got there about 7:05 and left at 7:40. I hope that many of the people leaving your line were people who discovered that they needed to be in the other precinct line. We have voted pretty regularly since they moved the polling place from Memorial High School about 5 years ago and it was very confusing the first time for us to find the right place. I’m pretty sure that there were many people there today that were voting for the first time at the church which just added to the confusion. We usually vote in smaller elections (bond and school) after work between 6 and 7PM and have sometimes been only the 35th or 36th person to cast a ballot. That was the most people that I’ve ever had the privilege of standing in line with to vote.

    You weren’t hassled about having your phone on? We were told repeatedly that we needed to have our cell phones off, especially in the voting booth. I’m not sure why and the volunteers were a little frazzled, so I didn’t ask or push it.

    Oklahoma’s optical voting system seems to work pretty well. I like that there is a paper trail in case a manual recount is needed. It will also let you know if you left your ballot blank (as did one lady in line in front of me) and give you the opportunity to correct it.

    All in all, it was a very pleasant experience even with the wait. We had a nice conversation with a lady and her elementary school-aged daughter in line in front of us about books and free coffee from Starbucks for voting. We both had middle school daughters with us too, but they had to leave to walk the rest of the 2 blocks to school before we were finished voting.

    Yesterday restored my hope and belief in what this country is supposed to be about.

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    Susan: We live in a small world! How cool we voted in the same space and then are connecting here– if you see me again sometime please say hello!

    No one said anything about taking photos with my iPhone– I did have it on “airplane mode” so the phone itself was off…

    I was SO inspired and moved by President-elect Obama’s acceptance speech last night as well. I also thought Senator McCain delivered an eloquent and strong concession speech. I have great respect for both of our Presidential candidates this year.

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