So this morning, as I was turning in my absentee ballot, I thought it might be interesting for my “photo of the day” to capture a tight shot of someone handing in their ballot. Before taking my camera out I asked my neighbor who was running the voting precinct if it would be ok to do so. Interestingly I found out, from her answer, that in California you cannot photograph in a voting precinct with out the approval of everyone in the room AND you can’t capture any portion of a ballot that might reveal how someone voted.
It makes sense if you think about fighting voter intimidation, but I just wanted a tight crop of the votiing box and any paper would have sufficed. Apparently this is something best to plan for and my off the cuff request was sunk. It just goes to show you… you learn something new every day.
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