Considerate, ready voters help process

11/18/2006

As a pollworker, I took the Lucas County Board of Elections to task last year for problems with the election and late reporting. You have to give credit where credit is due, and the board did a great job this past Election Day.

We had about 60 percent turnout at my precincts and we had a few people complain that we should have had more "touch screens" to use. We had seven machines for two precincts with about 1,200 voters, and I think that was about right.

The problem was the length of the ballot and that many voters never read the issues until they were in front of the "touch screens." I saw people vote in three minutes and I saw people take 25 minutes to vote. As they say, "you do the math." If 1,200 people took 25 minutes each to vote it would be a disaster.

I saw people take in a "Big Gulp" so they could drink while they were voting. Some people took young children who they had to hang on to while they voted, and last but not least I saw people taking a cell phone call while they were voting.

Please have some consideration for the person (it could be your neighbor) behind you in line and don't be selfish. Read about the issues and candidates before you get to the polls. Leave your youngster with a neighbor while you vote, and you could watch theirs while they vote.

Leave your drink and cell phone in the car. You should be able to do without them for five minutes. Take a cheat sheet with you from your political party, or cut out The Blade's list of candidates and issues. If everyone did this, there would be very short lines or none at all, and voting would be a pleasure.

HARRY WATSON

Brookfield Drive

I get tired of people saying "THE GAME" (Ohio State-Michigan) will actually mean something this year. Wrong! It will mean the same this year as it always has:

A young man from an impoverished background will be offered an athletic scholarship worth thousands of dollars; be paid under the table and provided with luxury automobiles, courtesy of the fat dogs of the alumni; have his grades fudged and score the winning touchdown in the national championship, and leave without a diploma and become a thug of society.

The NCAA is full of hypocrisy. Eliminate college sports and develop minor leagues where the participants can be paid legally.

Today will be no different for me: I'll be in my recliner chair watching something of substance on the Discovery Channel.

Michael S. Zawisza

Sandralee Drive

The walls of the White House are cracking and the foundation shaking, caused by a Democrat earthquake.

Maybe now President Bush will get the message that he was elected to represent the American people, not Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and his own personal agenda.

MARY PRICE

Whitehouse