Question about voting

[Haruko]

I'm an American citizen residing in the state of California. I'm mostly done with the registration form, but I'm wondering about whether to vote absentee or to go to a poll place every time. I've never been a registered voter, so I don't know how crowded it can get, if at all, at such places. But I'd rather go to the poll place if voting absentee would be a notably bad choice in comparison to going straight to a poll place, that trouble would be added to the tallying process on account of my mere convenience. I heard that absentee voting may even be a comparably good choice, at least here in California, but I heard that a long time ago and don't know if there's any merit to that assertion. All I do know is that, according to the Easy Voter Guide, 58% go the the polling place, and 42% vote absentee, but I wouldn't judge merit on popularity.

[Mr Bean]

If you want to keep voting after your dead, or once you've been convicted of a felony, it's a good idea to sign up as an absentee voter.

[Uraniun235]

I'm an American citizen residing in the state of California. I'm mostly done with the registration form, but I'm wondering about whether to vote absentee or to go to a poll place every time. I've never been a registered voter, so I don't know how crowded it can get, if at all, at such places. But I'd rather go to the poll place if voting absentee would be a notably bad choice in comparison to going straight to a poll place, that trouble would be added to the tallying process on account of my mere convenience. I heard that absentee voting may even be a comparably good choice, at least here in California, but I heard that a long time ago and don't know if there's any merit to that assertion. All I do know is that, according to the Easy Voter Guide, 58% go the the polling place, and 42% vote absentee, but I wouldn't judge merit on popularity.

I don't get what the "trouble" would be with vote-by-mail, especially if more than a third of the state already does vote-by-mail; one more isn't going to impose a massive burden upon the state.

Vote by mail. It's how all the cool kids play. I voted while I was nude in the last election.

[Honorable Mention]

Is your state usin' them fancy computers?

[Haruko]

I actually researched that just earlier today. Apparently we're using a "Sequoia AVC Edge 2". Here's a brief description of it:

Brief Description: The Sequoia AVC Edge is a voter-activated multilingual touchscreen
system that records votes on internal flash memory. Voters insert a "smart-card" into the
machine and then make their choices by touching an area on a computer screen, much in
the same way that modern ATMs work. The votes are then recorded to internal electronic
flash memory. When polls close, the votes for a particular machine are written to a
“PCMCIA card” which are removed from the system and either physically transported to
election headquarters or their contents transmitted via computer network.

I decided to go to the polling place to vote. It's ironic, I think, that part of the reason for my choice was laziness, having realized the several extra steps that'd have to take place for an absentee.

Anyways, my polling place is less than a mile away, at some small chapel.