Why should being at the wrong polling place disenfranchise a legitimate voter? I don’t think that is democratic.

Count Baby Count! After all the hard work, MO deserves to be Blue!!

Okay ShowMe,
In your world it would be ok for me to go your polling place and be allowd to vote… with no way for them to know if I have already voted in my own. Yeah that’s Democratic… NOT. That is p[art of the law.. you must vote in your own polling place.

Why do some people think they don’t have to follow the voting laws like everyone else does? Why would anyone have waited until election day to find out where to go? It is not like people didn’t know this election was coming.

oldtimer, I think there’s a middle ground. A voter who isn’t at their right polling place should have to cast a provisional ballot. But, if after the election the record shows that they voted only at that polling place (and these records do exist), then the vote should be counted. Alternatively, they should be told to go find their correct polling place rather than being sent home thinking they’d cast a ballot that ultimately wouldn’t count.

ShowMe: I agree with you that it’s stupid. I have relocated from St. Louis to Indiana, and here we are allowed to go to any polling place in our county of residence. That seems like a better system to me.

To add a little bit of clarification after reading oldtimer’s post:
Here in Indiana they mail you a blue card with your name and address on it. You take it to the polling place of your choice. If the info on the card matches the info on your ID, they take the card from you, record in the computer system that you voted, and they allow you to vote.
If someone shows up WITHOUT the card, though, they have to check the computer to see if that person has already voted somewhere else in the county. If the computer says no, then they are allowed to vote and it is recorded in the computer that they did so.
This way, voting goes very quickly for those who remember their blue cards, and those who forget them still can vote wherever they like with only a slight additional delay. I see no reason why St. Louis couldn’t adopt such a system.

Do we know whether all the absentee ballots have been counted yet, and where most of those early voters came from? That could make a difference also. What is the likelihood that those 7,000 provisionals can really make a difference? With the official count at McCain up by 6,000, it seems very unlikely. The Democrats need to come up with some extra Chicago-style “wet ballots”.

It is disenfranchisement to not allow a citizen who is registered to vote to not vote for President or state candidates no matter what polling place that they are at and, such laws prohibiting it are unjust laws.

There are often good reasons for someone to vote provisional. But there are often bad ones. I know that I had some people where they would refuse to go to their polling place, even if it was a short distance away, because they didn’t want to get in line there. They should have gone to the right place to begin with. There are phone numbers they could have called weeks in advance, and I know that I called for people that I work with, because they had the foresight to check before Election Day, and found a way (me) to find out. So is it disenfranchising to 3,000 people who refuse to do the right thing and go to where they should be, or is it disenfranchising the 540,000 that did check and go to the right place by letting the 3,000 do whatever they want? Why even have polling places, then?

Are the lawyers on this one??? Sounds like rejecting a ballot cause of the wrong polling place can be challanged successfully!