Get Out Your Vote
- Nov 2, 2010, 6:42 AM
- 5 Comments
Voters today decide which candidates to send to the U.S. Capitol, here, and Beacon Hill. (theqspeaks/flickr)
It’s Election Day here in Massachusetts. Polls open within an hour, at 7 a.m., and close for the evening at 8 p.m.
Elections today are held for six statewide offices, including governor, 10 congressional seats — nine of which are contested — and 115 seats for the Massachusetts Legislature. (Here’s the full ballot.) There are also three statewide ballot questions.
Need help finding your polling place? Enter your address here.
After voting, we welcome you back here to share your experience. At what time did you vote and how long did you have to wait? How many people were at your polling place with you? What else did you see and/or hear?
- Share your voting experience in the comments
Previously On ElectionWire…
« 2010: A Campaign Odyssey — Most Memorable Moments
Complete coverage of Election 2010 in Massachusetts. Edited by Benjamin Swasey.
Election 2010:
» Results: Your Election Night Winners
» Live Blog Transcript: Mass. Election 2010
I went to where I thought I was supposed to vote. I wasn’t listed, but the family I bought my house from 7 years ago was…they moved to NY state 7 years ago!
Thankfully, the folks at the polling station could tell me the name of the school I was supposed to be voting from…but no, they don’t know where in the same town that school is.
This last part is the best–apparently, sometimes registering through the RMV doesn’t always work. According to the gentleman at the polling station, there were many people today who thought they were registered through the RMV, but in actuality, were not registered to vote. According to the gentleman at the polling station, I should have gone to City Hall to register to vote.
I’m not sure I like the lessons I learned today.
I’m visually impaired and use an adapted voting machine that talks. Sadly, the poll workers hadn’t been trained in the machine’s operation and the headphones
were defective. Luckily, I brought my own headphones, and we were eventually able to get it to work. It took a lawsuit to get these machines . . . will
it take more litigation to require that poll workers receive adequate training before each election?
A worker at my polling place in Boston said it was “very busy.” She also reminded me it was a two-sided ballot, with ballot questions spilling onto the other side.
It’s such a beautiful autumn day for getting outside, it would be hard to imagine turnout not being (relatively) good.
I took my 9 and 6 year old kids with me to the polling place before school this morning. They read over my shoulder (sometimes out loud, which really takes the “secret” out of “secret ballot,” but that’s OK). 9 year old continues to be impressed with the idea of ballot questions, even those that do not involve dog racing and are therefore not quite as interesting to her. Her comment: “So you really get to say what you think about things like taxes and the government has to listen? That’s cool.”
Just alerting people that on some MA ballots, the ballot questions are on the BACK of the ballot. I didn’t notice them myself until it was too late! Please make sure you don’t miss them too!