From Tom's link:

However, co-owner Joseph Zaro says that "some customers are not buying a particular cookie because it represents their candidate of choice. One woman bought five Palin cookies, then smudged out her face, broke them up and threw them in the garbage."

Ha ha! So maybe they aren't in Steph's office, but there are some people thinking like I am.

I only used the kaCHUNK machines once when I was actually voting -- nearly every election since I turned 18, I've voted absentee. (I think I might have sent in my absentee ballot application too late this year, which is worrying me a little, but I'll see if I get a ballot. If not, it's not like NJ is a swing state. In the 2000 election, I ended up getting my absentee ballot like a month after the election -- it was postmarked November 1, but didn't show up in my mailbox until December.)

The first time I voted in MA, it was the Ka-CHUNK machines (where you could lock down Dem or Rep if you knew you were going to vote straight ticket), but ever since we've had the opti-scan. I've never had to wait - this year might be different. Not so much due to the Presidential race (since we are as sure a lock for Obama as the country has), but because we've got some high-profile ballot questions this year.

So maybe they aren't in Steph's office, but there are some people thinking like I am.

Actually, after you posted your comment and I replied, a pro-McCain co-worker e-mailed me to ask "Are we supposed to eat the one we're NOT voting for?" with a smiley face.

I replied "You can -- if there are any left!" With a smiley face.

I'm hoping that by running over to the polling place before the lunch crowd hits (11:30 am-ish), I'll avoid the worst of the line. When I did that in 2006, there was no one there, so I was in and out in 10 minutes.

There was a line in the morning at my polling place in '04 so I imagine there will be one this year. I'm going to go before work and then go to the New System Bakery for a treat to (I hope!) celebrate the New System!

It will be a big deal if NYC ever switches off the KaChunk machines - according to my now ex-govt working friends - the voting machines are controlled at least somewhat by organized crime and it's a racket.

They'll probably just get the contracts for whatever the new machines are too. Changes in windows, restaurants, vending machines, trash collection, strip bars, road construction, etc. never seem to slow them down much.

I have a civics question: Why do Americans have to register to vote? Why can't the gov't say, use tax rolls to create a base list of people eligible to vote? Why is the onus on the voter to prove eligibility? Wouldn't that take the politics out of voter registration?

Why can't the gov't say, use tax rolls to create a base list of people eligible to vote?

The baseline answer to this is that the federal gov't doesn't organize the elections, the states do. So we register by proving residence (and age) in the state in which we're living, not by proving we pay taxes, own land, etc.

Not everyone has to file? Some people that pay taxes can't vote?

Also, we have no national identity card, which would probably solve a number problems like this. Still don't get that.