Here are some of our photographs from the early voting site located at the Monterey Park City Hall, in Los Angeles County, California. I wrote on Thursday about our observations from Monterey Park, and Melissa will write sometime after the holiday weekend about exactly the issue that Paul wrote about in his most recent posting: how early voting centers need to be located along convenient routes where voters work, shop, go to school, eat and play.

The first photo shows the City Hall parking structure. Note the sagging early voting sign, and that there are directional arrows along the sidewalk. The entrance to the early voting site is right underneath the walkway marked “City Hall Police Facility.” When we pulled in, there was not any available parking in the structure, though we did park right across the street where I took the photo from.

Next, this is a closeup of the walkway to the early voting site, and the directional sign. Here (requires rotation) is the entrance to the early voting site, through the blue doorway. This picture (also requires rotation) shows a close-up of the doorway showing the informational signs on the doorway.

The next set of photos shows the interior of the early voting site. Here is the first interior shot. The entrance is on the far left. A voter would check-in with the woman at the desk next to the door, and the poll workers sitting behind the laptops would authenticate each voter, check that they hadn’t voted already, and the women behind the laptop on the left would format the voter’s activation card. I’m taking the photo from the area where waiting voters would sit, looking right at the tv/dvd voter education video.

This next shot pans to the right, showing some of the Diebold voting devices. Third, we have a photo showing more of the devices, spanning the two photos above. Fourth, here is the device for disabled voters, which was located on the far left of the early voting place (left relative to the other photos.)

Last, here is a main entrance to the City Hall. If you look closely, you’ll see a directional arrow point to the right. I took this picture because I found this directional arrow a bit confusing, as the early voting site was indeed located to the left — but not inside the City Hall (recall it was located in a walkway next to the parking structure). Not a big deal, as the City Hall isn’t very big. But it was a tad confusing.

I don’t know if I point this out in my last post, but early voting turnout in the two locations I’ve been to so far has been virtually non-existant. There isn’t a lot of interest in this primary election, and early voting turnout is really pathetic so far.

More on early voting in Los Angeles County later; it will be going on for most of the next week and I hope to visit many more of the early voting sites.