Tealin's Voting Adventure!

[tealin]

I really don't have any justification for drawing particular attention to my own voting experience, but:

1. Maybe someone will be interested, or at least I might like having documentation of it sometime in the future
2. This is a blog, dangit, that's what they're for
3. It's got pictures. People like pictures!

The designated polling place was equidistant from work and home so I'd planned on going at lunch, but I was ready to go much earlier than usual in the morning so I thought I'd ride by and see what the line was like. Too long to safely get through it before dailies at 9. Fun to see, though. I made my way back there at lunch (after stopping off at home for sustenance) and to my surprise there was no line at all. There were dogs, though. It was like a doggy club social. There was the guy to the left here, who looked like he was walking a three-headed dog, but to my disappointment upon closer inspection it turned out to be three dogs walking very closely together. On the lawn out in front of the building was a congregation of overbred lapdogs surrounded by young, fit people cooing at them. And, the requisite distance away, a trio of very attractive young ladies selling 'No on Proposition 8' to honking passing traffic. I suspected everyone driving by was planning to vote no on it anyway – this is 'godless heathen Hollywood' after all – but it was nice to see the effort. And slightly ironic because our polling station was a Baptist church. As I walked into the building (no line!) I followed the most Californian of old ladies, a seasoned veteran in the war against age, who to my inexpert eye had had at least one facelift and her eyebrows surgically removed so that she could draw them on an inch higher than they should have been, which made room for a swath of incongruous eye'shadow'. Amazing. Why is it that people who draw on their eyebrows always put that blob at the inside corners? Anyway, my sister had come home from voting obscenely early that morning and told me that there was only one person on the register with our last name, and that had been her, so I had brought several forms of ID and proof of address in case there was trouble at the desk. I'd looked up my address on the LA County Register website and knew this was the place I was to go, and that I was to direct myself to the 'green table' as two precincts were voting at the same place. I told my plight to the lady manning the desk. She asked to see my sample ballot; I replied I had received a card saying I'd successfully registered and nothing after that. She said the registration system was a mess. We checked the list for my name anyway, which of course wasn't there, but then she pulled out another list and lo, thereupon was my name. Apparently the 'blue list' (it was on blue paper) was for all the people who didn't register in time to get on the fancy bound 'white' list ... even though I registered before my sister. The lady repeated that the system was a mess. Buoyed by my triumph over the system and filled with democratic zeal, I marched to the voting booths! Of course, had the desk with the ballots actually been labelled as in my illustration, I might have noticed it, rather than arriving at a vacant booth, looking around for something to mark, and then wandering back in pursuit of ballots. I eventually got one from the guy who belonged on the Axiom, after he demonstrated to me how to slide it into the box/booklet thingy and mark my selections. This was very exciting, by the way; I remember watching my dad vote, probably when I was six, and it looked like he had a device that you stuck through a hole in the box/booklet thingy and punched a little hole in the ballot paper underneath, which had looked like fun. On the positive side, California (or at least Burbank) hasn't gone touch-screen (thank goodness!), so I still had the chance to use this device; on the negative, it doesn't actually punch a hole, it's a flat-topped felt pen that marks a little black circle on a designated bubble on the ballot. Oh well. I had plenty of fun making dots anyway. Then I took it back to the Axiom man and scanned it (SCANTRON!) and was on my way! Huzzah for democracy! As I was unlocking my bike from the signpost where I'd parked it, another biker came and took the spot. We exchanged pleasantries and shared our excitement. There really was something in the air that made it feel like A Big Day. As I've gotten older, things like Christmas and my birthday have lost a lot of their momentousness, and I expected Election Day to be much the same – I knew, cerebrally, that it was a Big Day, and expected that to be as far as it went, but there was something really visceral about it. That night, as I rode home after watching the BBC coverage, it was unusually windy. By all rights it was a random fluctuation in the space-time continuum, the sympathetic fallacy and all that, but it was really hard not to think symbolically about it. Exciting times. It'll be interesting to see where things go from here, but at least they will go.

Comments

[lomara.livejournal.com]

What an awesome post! Loved the illustrations. :)

[sequie.livejournal.com]

What a great illustration, both in words and pictures. But one thing I really have to ask here, why on earth do you American people vote on a day everyone has to go to work? When I red that you wanted to go voting during your lunch break, I honestly had to think that this is simply ridiculous! Go Europe for voting on sundays only :D

Anyhow, I think you´d have had so much more fun over here in Europe, where we usually have more than just two political parties running for the prime minister/ chancellor/ president/ whatever position. Though we don´t have those funny voting devices. We make crosses. Boring, I know. When ot comes to this, you totally win!

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

The Canadian system is actually a lot like you describe the European system: multiple parties, little slip of paper on which you mark an X, straightforward and quickly tabulated results, etc. And you just vote for a party, too, and the leader of the party becomes Prime Minister or whatever, rather than voting separately for Leader and Representatives. I generally prefer the Canadian system (there are still a few flaws, but it takes the popularity contest out of things) but it's certainly less exciting. They tend to have elections on weekdays too. I think perhaps that in the distant past when people were more sensitive about such things (especially in North America) there was distaste at voting on the Sabbath. Saturdays were workdays up until the early 20th century, and then they became a day of leisure when people were unlikely to interrupt their fun for voting, so that's right out. I think it's law that you have to be allowed time off from work to go vote if you need it.

[tony-cliff.livejournal.com]

I hear the "No on 8" parades were awesome places to pick up hot girls.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Haha! I don't doubt it.

[fani.livejournal.com]

This new drawrin style is cool!

[missuscarroll.livejournal.com]

I didn't get to vote, being a minor and all that, but I did see the Decemberists yesterday. The end was spectacular--a huge chorus of "here all the bombs fade away" and a call and response of "yes we can" + "yes we did." Something about Colin Meloy winning a bet on whether North Carolina would go blue. All very exciting stuff.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Oh dude, that is SO COOL. Aren't their concerts fantastic? As much as I love their CDs, ever since I saw them in concert the CDs have since served mostly as a reminder of the live performance. They closed with "Sons and Daughters" at the concert I attended too, though at the time it was more wistful. Crazy how all these songs have suddenly shifted tone! I've been trying my darndest to avoid it but I'm actually getting my hopes up! Somebody stop me!

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

The higher you put them, the more they will shatter when they meet reality on the descent.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

That's why I've been trying to avoid it. They certainly aren't as high as some people's. I think I'm just a little giddy at being reasonably confident the president-elect is smarter than me.

[mariahgem.livejournal.com]

Ahaha! Stories are always better with pictures!! Very nice! Glad you had fun voting! I loved the description of the old lady!! rotfl!

[maggielisette.livejournal.com]

Yay democracy! Also, yay Decemberists!

I'm bummed Prop. 8 passed but I suppose we can't make too much progress in a single election. That would be crazy.

Your pictures are delightful and you are an excellent raconteur.

[canisdoofus.livejournal.com]

(You're an American citizen? I thought you were Canadian! :P Plis eh'plain. Kthnx! ^_^)

LOLOLOLOL!!! HOMG! I laughed so hard I cried when I read that description of the lady manning the booth who's hobbies include cheating the natural aging process.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Dual citizen. :D

She wasn't manning the booth, she was in line in front of me (by 'line' of course I mean 'a queue of two people, in which she was in front and me behind). She hadn't registered in time or something and had to cast a provisional ballot as she wasn't even on the blue list! [gloats]

[canisdoofus.livejournal.com]

Ahhh... I see! I'm trying to capitalize on being second-generation Spanish-American and get a European citizenship as well. But there are issues when one is a native-born American rather than a naturalized one.

Oops! Sorry: read wrong.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I have seen many a woman who looked like that, and I'm only 17! Not even old enough to vote here, let alone in a country where I'm not a citizen.

I'm not sure who I'll vote for when I'm able. So far all I've decided is 'not Labour'.

[beckychan.livejournal.com]

I was shocked to discover how excited about voting I was this year. I mean, I was getting jittery a week beforehand when I thought about it.

And oh man, the fight my mom and sister almost got into last night. >_< Mom voted yes on 8, and Kellee and I are adamant no on 8ers. Skip (my stepdad) made some comment about too bad the election was over because that means a lot of good comedic material was gone. Mom and I agreed that we were happy it was done, and then Mom went on to say, "I wish those no on 8 people would just give up. They lost and--"

"Shut up!" Kellee demanded. "I mean it, shut up!"

"Don't talk to me that way!"

...

I sort of slunk out of the kitchen at that point. But a few minutes later they made up, so it was all good. Still. Politics. I don't talk them with Mom.

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

Don't fight, you're both right. 8 won, so your Mom won. But the courts will overturn it, so you win.

[karalora.livejournal.com]

Cliche time!

It wasn't so much what she said but how she said it--she had this gloating tone in her voice like she was just tickled she and her church got to yank rights away from people who'd barely had a chance to use them.

[randeepk.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Ok, I had no idea that you liked the Decemberists...did we have a conversation about this at some point??
Your drawings make me feel bad about myself ... in a ...good? way.

See ya on the flipside, by that I mean I will look down upon you from the third floor at some point in the day, when? Mysteries make the world go round.

Can you tell I'm slightly (read:horribly) tired?
*cough*

kthxbye.

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Aw, this is great, especially with the illustrations.

I didn't get to vote, due to a somewhat idiotic oversight, namely that I was registered to vote in Daviess County, although I actually live in Marion County.

The remark about the lady with the painted-on eyebrows made me smile, because my grandmother used to do the same thing--paint her eyebrows on, that is. She'd overplucked them when she was young, so that there wasn't anything left of them. Thus, the painted-on eyebrows. I always thought that was a little strange.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Did she put that blob on the inside corners?

Also, my eyebrows grow back to full contiguous bushiness even though I've been plucking them regularly since I was 14; what's her secret?

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Yes, she did!

I think the loss of her eyebrows was due to several factors. First, judging by the fact that my mom looks just like her, and has rather thin eyebrows, I'd say she probably didn't have much in the way of eyebrows to begin with. Second, she was blonde, so her eyebrows were fairly light colored. Also, I think she probably also waxed them as well as plucking. And lastly, after fifty-odd years of plucking and waxing her eyebrows into obscurity, I'm not surprised she didn't have much left. She was a beautician, so she was quite proficient at removing unwanted hair.

I'm like you, though--I still have to pluck my eyebrows even after years of doing so. Mine are quite dark, though. I think my mother envies them, since hers are so thin (although, unlike grandma, she still has eyebrows).