2.06.2008

My Experience Voting 2008

I voted yesterday despite a 103 degree fever...because I'm a patriot. I slept most of the day but around 5:00pm I awoke with something of a fury and bundled up on a relatively warm day to go do my civic duty. The polling place was, luckily, close, about a block and a half. After making it down four flights of stairs I stumbled down the street. I had never voted in NY before, only Florida. I was expecting the quaintish environment of a Gainesville, FL polling place. I wanted to see the ladies in their 80s , not really knowing what they are doing, but smiling and friendly. As I walked through the doors of the school, PS something or other, I knew this was going to be some sort of fear and loathing experience. My head was swimming and spinning (imagine!). I was freezing and burning. The first obstacle was the PTA bake sale. A chorus of apathetic voices asking me to support them but knowing I would not. I was way too sick to even consider eating a rice krispy treat.

The polling room was gigantic. It must have been the size of 10 gymnasiums. There was a buzzing sound. Most of the people in the room were poll workers, some sleeping, some barely awake. It was either 110 degrees in there or 30 degrees. As I waited to yell my last name to the hard of hearing polling worker I began to sweat, heavily. I guy behind me in line started to move towards the side of me, he was crowding me. I am way too timid to say anything to the guy, so instead, after first turning away so as to not pass him my infection I turned back in his direction to transmit my affliction. Too bad he will never know his over aggressiveness resulted in a chest cold and fever. But I know!

By the time I finally made it into the voting booth I was pretty relieved, it was almost over. As I scanned the ballot, I couldn't find my candidate. I started to worry that I would have to come out of the booth and ask in a little boys whiny voice, "where's my candidate, I don't see my candidate". After scanning a few more times I found my candidate, turned some switch, pulled the lever and exited the booth and the building ungracefully.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My experience was pretty uneventful overall. I did get to use one of those newfangled touchscreen voting machines. It prints a paper trail as you cast your vote, in the event that any shady business is suspected.

Side note: Can someone please explain to me how nearly 170,000 people in California voted for Edwards? Are they absentee ballots that were cast before he dropped out? Are these people trying to make a statement - that they don't like Clinton or Obama? Are they just uninformed?

plastic said...

i hope they are early voters or absentees...but who knows?

i heard that on feb 4th people in florida were showing up at polling places trying to vote...too bad they were a week late!

plastic said...

i meant feb 5th...you know duper-tastic tuesday