Voting

Yesterday I went out like every other proud American and went to the voting polls to cast my vote!! I had voted once in the past, but it wasn't a presidential election and it was at my old elementary school. This year I had to go to the fire station down the street from my house. There are all these signs on this fence and they say "VOTE" with an arrow pointing back. Of course follow the arrows to find this really nice man with coke bottle glasses, maybe 4 teeth and a bright yellow vest. He asks me for my ballot and then tells me "you're at the wrong place sweetie, you need to go to the fire station." The last I checked I was at the fire station, so feeling stupid I asked "Isn't that the fire station?" as I pointed to the firehouse. And he says "yeah that's fire station, this is Bus yard" or something along those lines. Literally they were less than 50 yards apart from each other, 2 polls within 50 yards of each other... great planning.


Once I did get to the fire station I'd have to say I was by no means impressed. From what I remember as a kid when my mom use to go vote and from when I went and voted back when I was like 19... didn't there use to be little curtains you'd hide behind?? Is the economy that bad that they cant do the little curtains anymore??? Anywho - I go inside and for starters another man (with maybe 10 teeth... none of which were on the bottom) and the blackest fingernails I'd ever seen tells me "Um you're not registered to vote m'am" as he scans the list. So I told him "look up Honda, maybe its under my maiden name." Still looking at the HA page he says "NOPE, no Honda on here." I said "no Honda is spelled HOnda" "Yeah I know, its not on here." As I look at the list I notice the last name on the page is like HESTER or something. So I tell him to turn the page and sure enough my name is on there! (WHY I'm registered under my maiden name and not my married name is still a mystery but hey it is what it is right?) He then gives me some sheet that looked like it had been photocopied 1,000 times and told me to write that my name was misspelled. But it wasn't... it was just the wrong last name. So I took the form and put it in my purse. He then tells me "no you cant leave with that form" Like I was going to go sell it on the black market or something. So I gave it to some kid and told him to throw it away. I then go to get my ballot and some snotty little brat hands me my ballot and as I pull my pen out of my purse snaps at me and says "YOU HAVE TO USE OUR PENS" as she hands me one of their fancy 5cent bic pens. So I head over to the polling stand, again VERY impressed, and I start on my ballot.

Once I'm done with the ballot I start to think... was that REALLY the presidential election? No way!

For starters - no one asked me for my ID when I went in there... how do they know I was me? Not only that even if they did ask me for my ID, my ID doesn't have the name of the person I voted under!

Then the ballot - we do our banking electronically, shop electronically, enroll in benefits electronically, work electronically and shoot sometimes even buy our groceries electronically and we haven't figured out how to VOTE electronically? I record shows on my tivo at home from work, I vote for American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance from my cell phone and I watch movies on my blackberry in the Target parking... and I still have to go fill out some great big paper ballot with a fancy bic pen?

Where's my confirmation? Some of us don't dare leave Starbucks without getting our receipt... but we walk out of a voting booth where we just voted for the next leader of our country without some sort of confirmation or receipt? You have to pass a piss test to work at McDonald's and you have to have a college education to count people's money... but to work a voting poll you have to be 18 and able to read? ... Or not read in the case of my friend with 10 teeth. You never get a confirmation that your ballot had been received or some sort of receipt for even turning it in... oh but they give you a dandy little "I VOTED" sticker. I guess you can always take that to court if you needed to. I'm sure there aren't millions of those floating around. How am I suppose to know if the snotty brat and mr. ten teeth turned in my ballot? What if they grabbed them all and took them home with them? You never know what people will do these days!

Okay so to end this tangent... regardless of the errored system we have to work with I was glad to see that my work with the "Baby Mama's for Obama" paid off (that's a joke!) and we have ourselves a new man for the job Bush couldn't pull off!