Nov. 7, 2006 - I did my duty
I voted today. Did you?
I think my experience is worth relating, because it is diametrically opposed to the one that the media had been telling me I'd have. I live in a predominantly African-American neighborhood, and one that is chock-full of "disadvantaged people". Given the situation and likely political leanings of the people in my neighborhood, I was fully expecting endless trouble at the polling station. You know, disenfranchisement, and all that.
Well, the only complaint I have was that the polling station didn't have a sign on it's main door directing me to a side door. However, I did have enough intelligence to go around the corner, and voila, there was the door! I don't think that counts as a disenfranchisment attempt. Everything inside the polling station was quiet and orderly. There were no lines at all. All the inspectors and volunteers were African-American. All were friendly and polite and helpful. Even though I was a first time voter in this county, I was not required to show any ID, since they found my name as a registered voter in their list. We were using the new electronic voting machines this year, and they were far from the insanely confusing things I'd been led to believe I'd be struggling with. Now, I'm not at my best at 9am (to be honest, I'm not even sharp-ish, more like bleary-eyed and dull), but I figured it out. It did take me a moment to realize that the flashing, beeping red light above the ballot that said "VOTE" meant that I could press it to cast my ballot, but I attribute that to my morning dullness rather than another evil attempt at disenfranchisment. As I left, the inspectors asked if the screen had said "Thank you for voting" to confirm that I had in fact cast a ballot and not gotten confused.
Josiah snorts and grumbles every time he hears about problems with voting in this country. "You people don't know how good you have it here", is his attitude. He's right. We don't have gun-toting guerillas making sure we vote "the right way". We don't have bloody military coups (or even bloodless ones) deciding our governments direction. Some countries don't even make a pretense of having democratically elected officials.
Do we have problems due to human error and corruption in the United States? Absolutely. Can computer glitches occur? Sure. Will today's election results be contested by the losing party. You betcha!
But I think some of us do forget how very, very lucky we are to live in the United States of America.
