Small Town Voting

Yesterday was election day in Kansas, for a lot of local offices, plus a constitutional amendment. Here’s what you can expect if you live in my area:

First, you go to the park shelter house. It’s the only voting place in the area. They don’t bother with “vote here” signs out front because everybody knows where it is already. There was a small “vote here” sign on the front door, one that you could read when you were about 5 feet away.

When you enter, you discover three election workers and, probably, no other voters. Their first question is “city or township?” If you live within the city limits, you get a different ballot than if you live outside due to things like mayor races. I’m a township.

Next, they look up your name on the big printout, and you sign, and receive your ballot. The ballots are printed on paper around here.

Now it’s time to select a voting booth. Not very hard; all four of them are free.

Then comes the tough part: voting. There are two questions on the ballot this time. First, selecting 3 candidates from the 3 that are running for the school board. (I don’t know why that’s on the ballot.) Second, voting yes or no on the constitutional amendment. That’s it. Leave the pencil in the booth, put the ballot in the box, and don’t forget your “I voted” sticker.

Elapsed time: less than 5 minutes.

I think it was getting busy as I was leaving. There was one other voter in the building.

2 thoughts on “Small Town Voting

  1. cliff says:

    John, the reason they have the 3 names on the ballot is to see if any one of them needs to start carrying a firearm. The story around Tekamah was of a mayoral candidate who only got 7 votes from the 800 voters. He said he was going to start to carry a gun, he didn’t know he had that many enemies.

    1. jgoerzen says:

      That’s the best theory I’ve heard yet.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.