Party Poker Blog

I just came back from voting. My poll was pretty empty, truth be told, which surprised the hell out of me.

In and out in thirty seconds. Now I just need to find someone who's live blogging tonite, since Otis is letting me down.

From the local paper:


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Democratic ballots run short


Clermont County had run out of Democratic ballots by early evening at some precincts and was turning people away at the polls who were requesting them, several voters reported.

Elections Board Director Mike Keely said at 6 p.m. his workers were printing out more ballots to ship to precincts in Miami, Union and Pierce townships.

“No voters are being turned away. We’re asking them to wait. We have deputy sheriff’s taking ballots to the polling places.”

But some voters said they were being sent home. An Enquirer editor was told his polling place in Milford had been out of Democratic ballots since 2:45 p.m. Another in Pierce Township said he was turned away.

The scarcity of Democratic ballots may be attributable to a massive amount of crossover voting. Around 4 p.m. the board said it was preparing to send more Democratic ballots to its Union Township precincts. “There are lots of people switching over. We’ve had far more people voting Democratic than we expected,” said an elections board worker.

Keely said the problem may slow election results because they may have to keep polls open late to make sure everyone has a chance to vote.

At 6:20 p.m., Andras Heimann said he had been waiting at the Boyd Elementary School in Milford to cast his ballot for Barack Obama because they had run out of ballots.

He said he heard they’d been out since 2 p.m. He said the school’s parking lot is full and poll workers don’t know how long it will be until more ballots come in.

“They were trying to bring in more but it was not enough, not enough,” he said.

“People are pretty calm here. But they realize it was not good because we have the right to vote whatever way they want,” he said. “Whoever is the main organizer here they should be better prepared.”

Ohio’s Democratic presidential primary has a wild card going today that is clearly present in nearly every polling place in the state – the phenomenon of Republicans and independents crossing over to vote Democratic.