FORMER Craven resident Graham Jagger moved to the United States  three years ago;  here  in his letter from America, he tells us how different voting is in his  new home. 

HERE in the US, July 4 is “Independence Day” which is a federal holiday commemorating the Declaration of Independence which announced the colonies’ separation from Great Britain in 1776.

I’m often asked, ‘how do people in the UK celebrate July 4" and I tell them, with a smile on my face, it’s a celebration of being no longer involved in the US anymore. That usually gets a laugh. But now I can tell them we have a General Election on July 4 this year. That came as a surprise, didn’t it?

But this last week we had Statewide elections here and I got my first experience of how the voting process works and it’s so different to anything I ever experienced in the UK.

As a “non-US citizen” I can’t vote in federal/national elections which would include voting for the President of the country but as a “legal permanent resident” of Georgia I can vote in State elections. I get to vote for candidates in multiple levels of legislature all at one time.

This included representatives in the US Congress, dozens of Judicial posts, the State Senate, the State House of Representatives, several County related posts, County Commissioner, and the School Board District. On top of all of that, there were multiple “policy” related questions to respond to. The concept of voting on a single piece of paper using a pencil and dropping it in a box just doesn’t exist here. I’ll take you through the process.

The polling station was at a nearby Senior Centre which was like a five-star hotel. I took with me the card I’d been sent and walked into the hall with a degree of trepidation not wanting to make myself look foolish. Thankfully help was on hand to guide me though the stages of the process. I told the lady who greeted me that I was a first-time voter and she said, “don’t worry about it, we’ll talk you through everything” which was reassuring.

First you were sat at a table and given a form to fill in and on the table, there was an enlarged example of a completed form with the highlighted sections that needed filling in. You are given a black pen to use which has a rubber end to it and told to keep this with you to use during the process. You understand why later. That was easy, but there was a question I needed to ask.

Instead of being able to vote for anyone who is “on the ballot” you must choose if you want to use the “Democrat” voting list, the “Republican list” or vote as an “Independent”.

If you chose the independent option, you could only vote for the Judicial candidates. In other words, you had to decide on which party you intended to vote for. That was certainly something that I didn’t expect but that’s the way it is here. So, I made my decision and put a cross in my chosen box.

Then you take that completed form to the next table where you had to produce your ID. Here in the US, having ID is essential for just about everything. For the vast majority of people that means a drivers license. When you get a drivers license it contains just about everything about you other than your inside leg measurement. The license is fed into a machine that reads all the details about you and registers you to cast your vote. Then they give you what looks like a plastic credit card but is green with just a large black arrow on it.

Having got that and my drivers license back, you head across the room to where there are a number of “voting machines” arranged so they are private with enclosures around them. You insert the green card into the machine in the direction of the black arrow and the machine kicks into life. The screen is about 24” high and 12” wide. It comes up with your details and you click to confirm it’s you, using the rubber end of the pen you were given when you came in. Now it makes sense. Then the voting starts.

There are multiple pages that come up on the screen to fill out. Now some of them were for “primary elections” which means choosing a candidate that will take part in the November election. That’s equivalent to a political party selecting their candidate but here the voters select which candidate will represent the party in the final election. Some posts were immediate appointments however and several were “unopposed” candidates where you could write an alternative name in if you wanted. I wonder how many votes Mickey Mouse got for Supreme Court Judge. Only joking.

After voting for candidates for your selected party in a huge variety of different roles you moved on to “policies” that your chosen party are going to run on when it comes to the main election in November. So, the people, the voters, select the policies they want to see their representatives deliver if they get elected. Again, that’s a novel innovation that I’ve never experienced before.

One I’d checked all the boxes on the multiple screens it began to print out my completed voting form, double sided. I then took that to the final table where I fed it into the counting machine. Once it had read it, it told me that my votes had been registered and in the count. I then got a sticker which said that I ‘d voted! The whole process took about 10 minutes, and I was on my way home. My first-time voting was over, and it felt good to be a part of the voting public.

The results began to come out within a very short time after the polls closed at 7pm. With the instant electronic counting instead of what you have in the UK it was almost instantaneous. Fascinating for me.

Next, on Friday, June 7 I’ll be at the Mercedes Benz Arena in Atlanta to watch Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones on their Hackney Diamonds tour. I’m looking forward to that for obvious reasons!