This morning
Alex Granados
Nov 04, 2008

A friend of mine woke me up this morning at about 6:45 a.m. He had just returned from voting. He told me that the line at his polling place in Manassas was pretty long. It took him about 45 minutes to vote. He was concerned because when he walked up to vote, a volunteer asked him if he wanted to vote in just the presidential race or citywide. He didn’t realize that there were any city races going on, but he said he wanted to go ahead and vote citywide.

Of course, in Manassas there are no city races. What the volunteer meant was that he could vote in just the presidential election or he could also vote in the Congressional races that applied to Manassas residents.

My friend was concerned that if somebody didn’t understand what the volunteer was asking, they might cheat themselves out of voting in a couple of important elections.

I think the problem must have been addressed though. When I went to my polling place about an hour later, the volunteer asked if I wanted to just vote for president or vote for everybody. I said I wanted to vote for everybody. She told me to touch the choice for “citywide” on the screen. I felt like the volunteer made my options clear to me. 

Of course, when my friend told me about what happened to him, I got momentarily indignant. I thought to myself that it would be awful if somebody lost the opportunity to vote because of a miscommunication.

I was fully prepared to call election officials on this when I walked up to the booth, but as I said, I had no problems. The day went on as scheduled.