Have ye done thy duty? (Updated)

Pic found at pdb as linked by the GOC.

If so, feel free to look around. Otherwise, hie thee to thy polling place and fulfill your responsibility as a citizen!

For you use today, NZ Bear at TTLB has his Election Tracker up over here.

I found the link to that at CQ, where I also found that the major TV networks have pledged to not release exit polling data until after polls close.

Apparently, Survey USA has not made that pledge, as they have released their polls of mail-in ballot voters here in the Washington 8th Congressional District race between former Sheriff and incumbent Dave Reichert (R) and up and coming nutroots twit, Darcy Burner (D).

The local left is jumping on the fact that more people who have already voted have voted for Burner 54% to 46% (here and here), forgetting that the (R) voters do not trust King County to count their ballot after last years debacle and the 2004 Governor’s election.

So we’ll just see.

Update 0806: I’m back from my polling place.

Something new for me, it was in a church. I’ve never voted in a church. I’ve voted in the indoor rec area of a catholic school, but never a church.

The parking lot was half full and there were always four to five other folks in the voting area voting at the time I was.

King County could learn a hell of a lot from Pierce County. First off, the people handing out the ballots all wore vests from the Pierce County Auditors Office. Secondly, I was offered the choice of a paper ballot or a touch screen machine. I chose the paper ballot out of habit, but it was nice to have the choice. However, the paper ballots used by the county were a bit flimsy. Either that or their pens were heavy.

Let me explain: The method used my the paper ballots was to have an arrow for each candidate or issue. The center section of the arrow was removed. To vote, you needed to fill in the missing section of the arrow coresponding to your vote with a provided fine point felt tip pen.

If you marked to heavily, as I did, when you slide it into the on-site counting machine, the machine refuses to count the ballot because the ink shows through both sides and the machine reads that as an over-vote. Apparently this was a common occurrence as the ladies manning the desk jumped into action.

I was given an envelope to seal my “bad” ballot in which was marked as “corrupted”. This envelope was put into a special box marked “Corrupted Ballots”. I was then given a new ballot with which to try again. Old heavy-handed me got it right the second time.

King County’s voting folks, while nice, are not nearly as knowledgable, and would probably have had me calling the elections office and sacrificing a chicken to get a second ballot.

Now I’m done and home and will sleep unitl 1600PST and then eat and go to work where I will listen to the returns.

Not only did I vote successfully, but I got home in time to get the trash out!