At least no one asked if it was my first time voting
Just returned from my polling place, which is always interesting. I invariably go in the morning, whether I'm gainfully employed or not, because otherwise I worry about it all day. It's possible that the judges in the evenings are a little less clueless; the morning ones scare me a little. Old and crabby. When I went to check in the woman stared at me until I finally said "I want to vote." Somehow I thought that was implied.
Cook County is slowly embracing the newfangled voting technologies; up until this year I had a punch-card ballot, but in the primary this time around I got one of those color-in-the-circle paper ones. This morning they gave me a choice between paper and touch-screen, but when I chose paper, they taunted me until I gave in and said I'd use the machine (like all the other young people are doing). Then I stood there like an idiot waiting for direction until they told me to go figure it out. Sigh.
All signs indicate that my votes registered correctly and were actually cast, which is better than some reports I've read about the touch-screen machines. I'm stil nervous, though. But at least I got all the way through to the end on the first try, unlike the guy next to me, whose screen mysteriously went dark while the paper record was being generated. When I left they were still waiting breathlessly to see what would happen, but apparently this was the second or third time this machine (one of two) had malfunctioned today.
Normally I'm much more excited about the whole process; voting today left me cold. It seemed like every race was a choice for the lesser of two evils. And there were so many judges up for retention! Thank God for the bar association ratings. Not that it matters much, I suppose; I heard on NPR that they generally get something like a 75% yes vote for retention no matter who they are and what they've done, because we're too uninformed to know what the hell we're voting for.
We also had two referenda--an assault weapons ban and and minimum wage increase--and two advisory referenda, both of which were the same question--should we get out of Iraq? One was countywide and one was for the town I live in. From our lips to Bush's ear, right?
Cook County is slowly embracing the newfangled voting technologies; up until this year I had a punch-card ballot, but in the primary this time around I got one of those color-in-the-circle paper ones. This morning they gave me a choice between paper and touch-screen, but when I chose paper, they taunted me until I gave in and said I'd use the machine (like all the other young people are doing). Then I stood there like an idiot waiting for direction until they told me to go figure it out. Sigh.
All signs indicate that my votes registered correctly and were actually cast, which is better than some reports I've read about the touch-screen machines. I'm stil nervous, though. But at least I got all the way through to the end on the first try, unlike the guy next to me, whose screen mysteriously went dark while the paper record was being generated. When I left they were still waiting breathlessly to see what would happen, but apparently this was the second or third time this machine (one of two) had malfunctioned today.
Normally I'm much more excited about the whole process; voting today left me cold. It seemed like every race was a choice for the lesser of two evils. And there were so many judges up for retention! Thank God for the bar association ratings. Not that it matters much, I suppose; I heard on NPR that they generally get something like a 75% yes vote for retention no matter who they are and what they've done, because we're too uninformed to know what the hell we're voting for.
We also had two referenda--an assault weapons ban and and minimum wage increase--and two advisory referenda, both of which were the same question--should we get out of Iraq? One was countywide and one was for the town I live in. From our lips to Bush's ear, right?
posted by Madame Defarge at 10:09 AM
2 Comments:
Long time no talk. It's been crazy here.
Needless to say, I am totally thrilled at how the elections came out. I spent the entire evening watching the polls. Our friend from Texas (Austin, TX, the most liberal city in that God forsaken red state) and I have a tradition. Every election, we sit up online, instant messaging each other, watching the latest polls on CNN, watching the blogs (well, that's his job, I refuse) and relieving the fear of evil triumphing with witty banter. I finally had to go to bed after midnight to be able to teach the next day, and told him that I left the country in his capable hands; I expected it to be blue when I woke up. He didn't let me down. He, like the Diebold machines, delivered.
As usual, we waited to the last minute and were voting at 7:40 at night. But when we got home from work, there were a ton of propositions to go over still. I thought I had spread them out, doing a couple every night, but it was still rediculous. And whoever wrote the explanations for them should be shot. Mike's friend said he wasn't going to vote because he didn't know the issues. That made me so mad, since he had 48 hours to figure them out. We spread out all of our pamphlets, got out the Bee's recommendations, cross referenced that with my union recommendations, and then added what we thought was right. It was quite the process, that's true, but I certainly wouldn't give up the right to vote because it was inconvenient. That's just irresponsible. Anyway, The Gubernator is still in power, unfortunately (I voted for Angelides as the lesser of two evils), but I think he's been changing his tune over the last year and a half, since the special elections debacle. He's leaning more to the left, and added a bi-partisan cabinet, but he still thinks teacher and nurses are terrorists. We'll see how it goes.
In the meantime I've been watching Jon Stewart and Bill Maher and Keith Oblermann to lighten my spirits. There are so many things in this country that still depress me, but I have to say, I feel much better now that it's blue! What do you say, Obama in 08? ;-)
Hell yes. I've been waiting for two years already to vote for him!
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