Reply #9: Interesting. My personal observation

[spoogly]

was not in Ohio. It was in Wisconsin. My polling place contained two prcincts. Both stood in the same line. When they handed you your ballot, they gave out a colored ticket...Green and Pink I believe. They were just the old fashioned movie admission ticket. They were the type of ballot that you blocked in the circle with a pencil...like the old SRA exams. After you filled out the ballot, you were supposed to deposit them in the cooresponding colored box. (One box for each precinct with something, I do not recall what, indicating the color)

There was an older couple about 20 people in front of me that ended up almost right next to me when they finished their vote (I was standing about 10 feet from the deposit boxes.) They were confused about which box to place their ballot in and apparently had not caught on to the colored box cooresponding to the ticket they had been given. I was about to go over and help them but they said something to the effect that they were just going to deposit their ballot in one of the boxes and let the election people figure it out. They did not think it was a big deal to get the deposit boxes straight.

I don't know what happened...whether their votes counted, whether they randomly deposited their ballot in the right box etc. But if it happened like this in Ohio, there was the rule that you had to cast your vote in the correct precinct. So likely if it was in Ohio, their votes would not have counted.

Incidently, I have no idea who they voted for although my precinct went narrowly for Kerry and the state went for Kerry.

Just an interesting illustration.