Tuesday, November 4, 2008

::30:: Day 28

I only did two things today. Well, two important things after I did things like wake up, feed the dogs, go to the bathroom, and brush my teeth.

1.) I voted. Actually, Stud Muffin and I voted before we did the second thing: retrieve the Turd from Mississippi. (I was going to say we voted before doing number 2, but that didn't sound quite right!)

Okay, so 1.) We voted. There is no early voting in this part of rural America, so we trotted off to the local polling place, after panicking that we weren't registered since we hadn't received a sample ballot to study the issues.

Once we got to the polling place, we saw why we were neglected in the Great Election Sample Ballot mailings. There wasn't much to vote on around here. No ballot issues, no constitutional amendments, just a couple of offices like State Senate and President. So they had a jumbo version of the ballots taped to the table for your perusal while you waited your turn. Our turn. It should have taken about {} that many seconds to check in and vote. But Nooooo.

The good news is, that contrary to what other people in other areas of the country have experienced, there was no line at our polling place. In fact, after I voted, I learned that I was the tenth person to cast a ballot there that day.

The bad news is that they had Grandma Sincere from Fresno checking IDs at the first table.

This is her!! Photo by www.sequenza21.com

This is how the procedure at our location went. Hand your ID or voter's card to Grandma Sincere. She looks your name up in a book and asks if you live at the same address. Then she v.e.r.y slooooowly fills out, in her neatest printing, a form about the size of a prescription and has you sign it. Then you sign the book too, for good measure. This is if she doesn't get caught up in visiting with someone else working with her or even just walking past. Like this: Name... L I S "Myrtle how's your Mama doin'? She feelin' better? Good. Where was I??" A A L S O. Address: .....

The Grandma hands the form to the next old lady, who writes the exact same information down on a sheet of bigger paper. Then she hands it to the old lady that punches some buttons and hands you a receipt with a number on it.

Cartoon by bartblog.bartcop.com

Then you step to one of the 2 voting machines and a guy takes over, telling you how to work the machine and enter your number to get a ballot. Then (and this kills me) he dials the machine to highlight the "presumed" choice for President and Vice President. I asked him about the names of the other side of the screen, and he said, " Oh, those are Independents. You probably won't want any of those!"

Huh??

Did this guy just more than suggest who I should vote for and who I should ignore??

And then he stood dangerously close to my shoulder while I actually picked my very own choice for President, Vice President, Big Cheese and Head Clown.

And they didn't even have pretty "I voted" stickers to put on your shirt or jacket!! The shock and horror of it all!!

*****

2.) After casting my vote for whomever, we headed off to collect the Big Rolling Turd from the repair place in Mississippi. It was a beautiful sunny day and we had a nice drive down.

And I drove the Turd home. 150 miles. All by myself. And I didn't kill anyone.

1 comment:

Thimbleanna said...

Holy Cow Woman -- you've been making good on your 30 days of posting in my absence -- what a lot to catch up on -- you've been a busy woman!

Our polling place was packed and we stood in the hour wait line for 20 minutes before someone came walking down the line to say our precinct was in a different line with no waiting. Um...could we post a sign or two please? Then when we got to the book where you sign your name, there were four members of our family registered -- hubs, me, son and DIL. Son and DIL voted absentee since they don't live here anymore. Only they had marked DIL and hubs as the abs voters. It took about 15 minutes to get them to understand the problem. When they finally got it, they called someone who apparently had the correct info and they let hubs vote.