I voted at the early voting center at 1700 Morse Road in Columbus yesterday. I arrived at 8:35 PM, went to the front desk and was asked if I was there to vote or register to vote, and when I told them I wanted to vote, was given a short form that took 2 minutes to fill out. The form had two blanks, one for my driver's license number and the other for the last four digits of my Social Security number. I filled in the last 4 digits of my Social, and returned the form to the next desk, where my signature was verified against the one on file in the county voter book and my Social was confirmed. A printer spit out a label, which was put on my ballot request form (actually, it was an absentee ballot request form), and I was directed to the voting machines.

There are 100 machines at this center, and I was taken immediately to a machine, the poll worker took me to a machine, put the supervisory device into the machine, she typed some codes off the label previously described, and my suburb's ballot appeared on the machine. The touch screen did a print record of my vote as it went, and I was able to verify each vote. I went through the entire ballot in 7 or 8 minutes, and I walked out of the voting center at 8:53 PM, or start to finish in 18 minutes, it was totally painless.

There were 5 buses outside the polling location when I arrived, and only 2 were left when I departed, which is an indication that this is a very efficient voting process there. In previous presidential elections, I had to wait over an hour at the old downtown center, so this is a vast improvement over the old system. I do not know how it is going in other counties in Ohio, but Franklin County has a fast, painless system.

Outside there was a big party atmosphere, with live music, people from both parties handing out sample ballots, and a really good time was had my almost everyone who loves our democracy, and who values our RIGHT to vote. Maybe some Republicans were disappointed that our county has set up an efficient means to vote, but I am very pleased.

I voted for the president and Sherrod Brown, of course, and also voted for an amendment that, if passed, will take the gerrymander from the politicians. We want to make Ohio a place where voters select our politicans, not a place where our politicians select their voters. Neither party is capable of handling redistricting fairly. So we have to take it from them because it ain't working. Whichever party has 3 of the 5 votes on the reapportionment board has 100 per cent of the say about where the lines are, and we are tired of that system.

In Ohio, at least from my one-county sample, it is easy to vote early, and I suggest that everyone do it.

In Franklin County, click this link for detailed information on early voting from the BOE:

http://vote.franklincountyohio.gov/

Cuyahoga County:

http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/...

Hamilton County (Cincinnati):

http://boe.hamilton-co.org/...

Lucas County (Toledo):

http://co.lucas.oh.us/...

Summit County (Akron)

http://www.summitcountyboe.com/

Montgomery County (Dayton):

http://www.mcohio.org/...

To find your county's early voting information, Google "XXX county Ohio early voting".

GOTV. Early voting is easy in Ohio, and you need to defend your RIGHT to vote. There is no requirement for a photo ID to vote early. All you need to do is put the last 4 digits of your Social Security number or your entire driver's license number on the form, which takes two minutes to fill out. Please protect your right to vote by voting.