20081014(003)

This is what the room looked like when I arrived in the early afternoon.

The law requires that employers give their employees time to vote on election day. Many employees wait until late in the afternoon and leave work early to vote on their way back home.

It was brighter than it looks here - there's plenty of lighting in the gym. There were house wives, elderly people, one of my neighbors who brought his young son to see how it's done:

The officials at each desk check the identification of the voter and hand him a ballot (which is already folded.)

The voter:

* takes the ballot behind the big cardboard blind
* marks it,
* folds it again,
* hands it back to the official who tears off a receipt from the edge of the still-folded ballot.
* The folded ballot is then handed back to the voter
* who must stuff it into the ballot box - the small box at the side of the table.

There is no way for anybody to identify the voter from the ballot.