Nov
So, I was there at the polls this morning at 7am. Hubby called me to warn me that the parking lot was full, but I didn’t figure it would be any better after work so I thought, what the hell.
THANK GOD WE DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS EVERY YEAR!
It amazes me how bad and unorganized the process is, given how many years we’ve been doing it and how important the outcome is.
My voting location is an elementary school around the corner from my house. As I entered the building, the line was all the way down to the end of the hallway, leading into the gymnasium where the actual voting takes place. It took me 35 minutes to get to the doorway to the gym, but I wasn’t bothered yet. Once getting in, we had a piece of paper we had to fill out with our name and address, then we could enter one of the two lines. The first line was for those with last names starting with A through L, the other line M through Z. I was fortunate enough to hear one of the few announcements stating this, so I didn’t experience any confusion. I stood patiently in this interior line for 25 minutes, watching the process around me. I watched as there were 7 (out of 9) empty boothes for voters. I watched the ladies in line in front of me take it upon themselves to yell out an annoucement to those in line behind us regarding the different lines for different letters. (because those working failed to do so and no one populated the other line.) It was incredible.
Finally I made it to the front of this first line. It was here that I approached an elderlywoman who would find my name on the register, highlight it, initial my form, then wait , oh maybe 5 minutes, for a pink sheet of paper where she would take a sticky label from her register that included my name and place it on the pink paper. These sheets were reusable. Evidentally they only had 10 in the whole place, so there was a long wait to move to the next line with the pink sheet in hand. Not only were they short on these pink papers, but no one seemed to have a ballpoint pen either, so they were sharing among three workers. (While waiting in line, I saw a voter actually dig in her purse and pull out two pens which she then donated to the workers…)
Off to the next pointless line where I slowly shuffled to the front, presented the next clueless lady with my papers. She then took my forms, placed them in a pocket on the front of my ballot folder, placed a ballot inside. However, if she didn’t have any folders, she had to get up, walk across the gym to some other old geezer worker to get folders. Yes, he could have brought them to her at some point, except he was ancient and could barely walk as it was.
Off to the 3, but not final, line. Once I got to the front of this line, the woman took the forms out of the little pocket, filed them, took the sticky label, put it on yet ANOTHER register where she also wrote down the number on my ballot. I dunno, but maybe they could have combined the process with line #2? crazy…
Off to line number 4. Now I have my ballot and I just need a booth to actually complete it. Can someone explain this to me? I could give two shits if you see who I’m voting for. Why do I need an effing booth? Seriously, what a waste of time. Anyway, if I did want to sheild my ‘answers’ from some copycat, I could very well do that on my own, I don’t need some stupid cubby.
Ok, I’m voting. It took me like 1 minute to complete. Now off to the old milkshake so he can tear the top off my ballot and talk me through inserting my ballot into the ballot machine thingy.
During my adventure in voting today, I did find out that these incredibly old and clueless workers were not volunteers like I had originally thought, but they were paid. They had to undergo orientation and training for their jobs (it didn’t show) and anyone can do it in their district (unless they have been convicted of a felony).
So, you may ask, am I going to do something about this rather than just bitch about it all day? You bet your ass I will. At the very least, I will be applying for the job, but hopefully by some miracle there will be a way to improve the system!
Anyone else have any good ‘election day’ stories to share?
