Vote early and often

On the way home from work yesterday I voted. It is funny how voting involves really self-important officials herding you through a rigid series of lines, creating an atmosphere of Super Governmental Importance, and yet the entire thing is being held in, like, an elementary school or a church.

In one line an official handed me a blue card, denoting my Democratic party allegiance. (Is it just me, or is this sort of a violation of privacy?) Five seconds later, in the next line, another official collected my card. Maybe I am thick, but I cannot determine the significance of said card practice.

The room was awash in the blue cards. One guy about my age had a yellow card, denoting Republicanism, and he stood out like tofu at a Southern barbecue. It was as if he were wearing a Scarlet A.

The way we filled out our ballot was very primitive. There were two bars for each candidate's name, about 1 centimeter apart, and you had to connect them with a crappy golf-scoring pencil. At one point I was pressing down so hard to make the greasy little mark show up that my hand slipped, and I f-ed up my entire paper, causing the surprisingly modern ballot-accepting machine to reject it. I asked the lady manning THAT line if I could have an eraser to fix the one mark, and she was like "No erasing! No ballots may be erased! Your ballot is spoiled, and must be turned in over there - in the 'Spoiled Ballot line.' "

So I got a whole new ballot, and my dirty skanky ballot was sealed up in a "Spoiled Ballot envelope," and a tick-mark was noted in the "Spoiled Ballot Official Tally Form."

I hate bureaucracy.

I made it through the second ballot with little to no spoiling. I was so grateful when the machine accepted my paper that I actually said "I did it right!" to the lady who gave me an "I Voted!" sticker. She was like, Yes dear, pat pat pat. It's entirely possible that she thought that I was retarded. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)