Brief Personal Update, With Voting

[mabfan]

Life has been busy; Nomi and I have done a lot lately -- seen plays (Hamlet, The Tempest), seen a movie (The Prestige, last night) seen friends (cellio, for one), gone to synagogue (we're sponsoring kiddush this shabbat in honor of my father's yahrzeit) -- but I've been too busy with all those things to spend much time reporting on those selfsame things here. And I've been attempting NaNoWriMo, as you all know. I started with a major push on words but have since fallen back, so I have yet to break 10,000 words. I'm hoping maybe to make a major push again today.

And, as many others have noted, today is election day. As is our habit, Nomi and I went to our polling place before they opened this morning so we could exercise our franchise as early as possible. We ended up being voters #2 and #3. There's something nice about filling out a paper ballot and watching it get slurped by the scanning machine.

I've had so many things I've wanted to write about or comment on, but no time to do so. Ah well. There will be time hereafter.

Comments

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

There's something nice about filling out a paper ballot and watching it get slurped by the scanning machine.

Ah, but I so miss the drama of closing the curtain, feeling like the all-powerful Oz, and then that satisfaying ka......CHUNK! of the big red lever when I'm done.

Next thing you know, they'll allow internet voting and we'll be casting ballots in our pajamas. Not the best way to impress people with the importance of the process.

We ended up being voters #2 and #3

I voted around 8:30 and was #286, which is fairly high for that time of morning at our precinct. And the poll worker mocked me, as he always does, for using the privacy folder. Grrr. If I wanted my neighbors to know how I'm voting, I'd have a row of signs on my lawn.

[magid.livejournal.com]

And the poll worker mocked me, as he always does, for using the privacy folder.
What?! That's not appropriate!
At my polling place they make sure everyone has one and uses it.

(What I miss about voting is using the crank to feed my ballot into the box. Those were the days! :-)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

If the poll worker is mocking you for using the privacy sleeve, you may wish to report him to the City Clerk's office.

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

Privacy folder?? I never knew there was such a thing! Nobody ever showed it to me when they switched to those new optical scanners. I'll have to ask about it next time!

I was a kid in Florida when they abandoned the mechanical voting machines with the curtain and the big red lever, in favor of that notorious punch-card system (you know, the one with the hanging chads...) I still remember the commercials they had explaining how to use them:

"Pick your ballot! Punch your candidate!"

Sometimes I wish I was still able to punch my candidate :-)

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

The mockery is unwarranted and uncool. In my poll station (in the basement of a Christian church), all ballots were pre-inserted into privacy sleeves. (We both finished marking ballots at about the same time, stood there looking lost, were told where to take the ballots, started that way, realized we had each accidentally brought along the marker, went to put them back, and got gently teased for the twin act. That's an entirely different order of teasing/mockery.)

Signs were also posted thanking everyone for voluntarily showing identification, but when we attempted to do so, the poll workers waved us off. That was in the mid-afternoon, though; I don't know what happened with the morning staff.