I wavered about voting in the primary today. Somehow I got it into my head that you had to be a *registered* member of one of the parties to vote in it, even though friends who are better informed polly-tickally speaking than yer fav-o-rite blahgger said differently. And so I kind of forgot that there was a primary today until I walked through the Haisley schoolyard at 0-skunk-30 and poll workers were putting out signs.

It was too early to vote at that time but they opened the doors as I walked back through on my return trip. I didn’t have my driver’s license with me so I tried to tell myself that that made it okay for me not to vote. And then I saw a sign about a ballot proposal thingy. What? I didn’t know about that. So I looked up the election on my phone and this time I read the fine print, which stated that I did not have to be *registered* with either party, just that I had to declare a party for this particular election. I wasn’t very comfortable with even doing that but I sucked it up, went home and, after breakfast and morning chores (oh you know, milking the cow and stuff), I hoofed it back over there, driver’s license in hand, and voted. Whatever else, I got some steps in.

I was number 111. My voting experience was smooth. The Beautiful Jackie, a veteran poll worker/former Haisley moom/0-skunk-30 dog-walker, was there to scan driver’s licenses and it seemed that the early morning kinks had been worked out. Like when I approached the Dreaded Ballot Eater, the young woman who was manning that beast advised me to take my ballot out of the sleeve and flip it over because the musheen seemed to swallow it better that way. I’m guessing they had some problems with those beasties earlier on, like at the time I *usually* vote.

I told TBJ that I didn’t vote earlier because I didn’t have my driver’s license with me. She reminded me that on the back of the little ballot application form, there is a place to sign an affidavit that you are in fact an eligible voter. And yes there is and maybe I’ll try that the next time I get into that particular situation. I am not crazy about the voter ID law we have here but we won’t go there today except to say that if all you have to do is sign an affidavit on the back of the ballot application *at* the polls, what the heck good does the law do. I know of ONE person in my entire life who tried to commit voter fraud and he was a long time A2 landlord, NOT an illegal immigrant, and we’ll also go *there* some other time.

Still, it’s easy if you do have your driver’s license with you and at least TBJ knows enough not to try to scan them upside down like somebody at Mouse’s polling place was doing. (But wait! Don’t you vote at Haisley too, Mouse?).

Good things? 1) A lot of people seemed to be voting today. 2) There were plenty of young folks sprinkled amongst the folks manning the polls. My polling place has always been staffed by a preponderance of elderly folk. Make no mistake, that is wonderful and I hope all poll workers continue to serve as long as they can but it was great to see a wide variety of ages over there today.

Anyway, I did vote today. I’ll let you guess the party and the candidate. Grok grok grok 🐸

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 8th, 2016 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.