My sister e-mailed this account of voting this morning in Ballard, along with the impressions of a friend of hers from France:
I got to the polls at 6:30 this morning. The volunteers were setting up and there was not a line, I think I was the first arrival, so I walked over to a coffee shop just opening and got a latte and snack to go and got back to the poll by 7am, there were some voters waiting inside and my French friend Elsa was already there photographing inside. She was shocked we would vote in a church but the secular nature of the "activity room" at the Ballard Free Methodist Church assured her a bit that we are not quite as nuts as she imagined. She was also shocked at the size of our ballot and number of items (they vote for 1 thing only at a time), that it's not completely sealed in secrecy (theirs have many privacy safeguards including sealed, signed envelopes), that we vote on a work day (they vote on Sundays), that we vote in all kinds of places (they have little city halls all over the place), that it looks like our electronic voting is going to be handled by private companies - THIS IS NUTS! Anyway, she's in 7th heaven going all over the city to different locations to document the process from her POV.
