SILOAM SPRINGS -- If the first day of early voting on Monday was any indication of how voting will go on Nov. 8, voters may expect long lines at the poling places because of undecided voters who just cannot make up their minds on how to vote in the presidential election.
According to poll workers at the Siloam Springs office of the Benton County Clerk, many early voters spent a considerable amount of time trying to decide which box to check in the race for president and vice president of the United States. In some cases, undecided voters tied up the voting machines for hours while trying to make up their minds.
Cynthia Counter, a poll worker at the office, said the indecisiveness of voters was causing lines to increase as the day went on.
"After voters had been at the voting machines for 20 or 30 minutes, I would go and ask them if they were having a problem with the voting machines," Counter said. "And it was always the same answer. The machines were working fine, but the voters were perplexed and trying to decide on their choices for president and vice president. They just couldn't make up their minds," she said.
We overheard one of the voters, a Gentry man named Charlie Waffler, talking out loud as he looked down at the choices before him on the screen of the voting machine.
"Do I vote my conscience or vote the lesser of two evils?" he muttered to himself. " If I vote for the third-party candidate who would make the best president, am I wasting my vote and possibly paving the way for the greater of two evils to be elected by not voting for the lesser of the two evils? And which is the lesser of the two evils, anyway? Is it the one who lies about everything and should be in prison? Or is it the one who keeps spouting off with his mouth and doesn't necessarily agree with himself from one day to the next?" Waffler asked himself in a perplexed voice.
Waffler's indecisiveness left poll workers indecisive, too, about what to do. Waffler, who arrived to cast his ballot at 9:43 a.m., was still there at 4:30 p.m. and a line of early voters extended out into the parking lot.
"We weren't expecting this," said Bonnie Tabber, who was in charge of the early voting in Siloam Springs on Monday. "We didn't know what to do," Tabber said. "We didn't want to turn away voters, but we had no choice," she said. "We had to let Waffler finish voting and we couldn't rush the other indecisive voters, either. We finally had to just ask voters still waiting to come back on Tuesday morning and to be decisive."
But the problem continued on Tuesday with other undecided voters again tying up the voting machine for hours. A few voters had apparently stood there, looking at the choices for president all night long, and were still undecided in the morning.
In a surprise move to resolve the problem, the election commission is seeking a change on the ballot in the presidential race before the general election and maybe in time to help with early voting next week.
"We were considering adding more voting machines to keep lines moving," said Phillip Tracker, chairman of the commission. "But we realized more machines would not speed things up much if most people still remain undecided. So, we've proposed a change in the ballot question regarding the choices for president in which voters can check the boxes of all the candidates they really don't want in the Oval Office. We then will tally the nay votes and the candidate with the fewest number of negative votes wins. We think this will make the process much easier for the multitudes of undecided voters," he said.
While such a change in the ballot after early voting has already begun is unprecedented, the change is being viewed as necessary if all in the election lines are to have opportunity to vote before the Jan. 20 inauguration date. And the choice should be much clearer for undecided voters if they can just check the boxes of all the presidential candidates they don't want in the White House.
May the best man (or woman) for the job lose?
S.A. Tired covers fictitious news from an unrealistic perspective for the Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. News and views in Spinning the News are claimed by no one else but the author.
Editorial on 10/26/2016