Vote!
Tuesday November 07th 2006, 1:22 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

When my husband and I showed up at the polling station today, our neighbor was there voting. No screens nor curtains, just machines placed a bit away from each other.

Jim was having a bit of a time with it, and twice had to call over a poll station worker. He told us afterwards that while touching the screen with his index finger, he guessed he hadn’t kept the other fingers tucked out of the way enough, had apparently brushed the screen, and twice had frozen it up. Oops.

So, with that in mind, I was very careful in how I touched that screen. Got all the way through, no problem, and I was quite glad that this time the machine was going to print out a paper strip verifying my choices; the non-paper-trail version of a few years ago had so clearly been a mistake.

Got all done, and the thing said to press continue or go back. Continue. Up scrolls the paper, longer than you could see all in one take. Continue. Okay. Check it, it’s fine, continue. And then…

VOIDED was what appeared at the bottom of the paper. What?? Like heck I’m going to Continue! I called out for a poll worker, who then tried both to fix the problem, while making a heroic effort not to be looking at my vote. I was trying not to be indignant: with Jim’s warnings in mind, I had been exactingly careful in how I’d touched that screen. Okay, so, we took it back (I didn’t have to redo my choices) and hit Continue. Continue. Continue. And then, having touched nothing in any way different from how I had the first time, my ballot was accepted and my vote recorded.

Enough. It’s time to become a permanent absentee voter and be done with it.

(On a lighter note, I happened to notice the Spanish translation of the office Schwartzenegger is running for: “Gobernador.” Somehow that struck me as screamingly funny.)


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