Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Voting in Athens, GA: A Small Pictorial

Here are a few shots of democracy at work in Athens, GA yesterday. Actual democracy at work not shown. As I said during the results live blog last night, we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the room with the voting machines. But Hillary Clinton can campaign mere feet from voting booths? Political science can only take you so far. Apparently taking pictures inside a polling station are beyond that point. And for the record, I did play the "I'm a political scientist" card.

Here's our polling station at Fire Station #7. See, no line. Well, not at 3:30pm in the afternoon. At 7:30am the line was out the door and around to the right there. The ladies checking IDs [Yeah, Georgia has one of those ID laws on the books too.] said that that traffic flow continued into the 11 o'clock hour and died down some after lunch.
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Poll working at its finest. Things had slowed down enough by the time that we got there to vote that these two poll workers could be greeters. The gentleman even walked over with my kids and let them hop on the back one of the many painted, plaster [Georgia] bulldogs around town.
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And finally, here is the door to the infamous Room of Democracy. They had 8 machines set up in there; an increase over the 4 or 6 they had four years ago. They had also added a nice provisional ballot station for this election. That certainly worked better than pulling those folks aside like they did in 2004 and loudly discussing where they were supposed to be.
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Bonus Picture: Yeah, that's me.

...as Joe the Plumber on Halloween. In the end I decided to take my own costume advice and go with Joe. Plus, I thought it would be nice for everyone to put a face with the name. Admittedly, it is a stupid looking face here, but I don't photograph very well, especially with a plunger by my side. There's a reason I'm an academic.
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Thanks to the good folks at Paisley Pictures for providing the pictures.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hehe, I like the costume idea.