Trying to do my civic duty
So, this morning, I left the house slightly early so that I could go to my local polling place and cast my vote. Sounds easy, right?
I arrived at my usual polling place, and realized that my name wasn’t on the list. I gave the election judge my address, and he told me that everyone in my precinct had been moved to a different polling place.
I had a little time left, so I followed the instructions to the other polling place, which was the dining area of a nursing home. The place reeked, and reinforced my hope that I never wind up in a nursing home, or that if I do, by then my sense of smell will have been significantly reduced. But I digress . . .
There was a line of three people, and the election judges — who could have been mistaken for residents of the home — were moving at the pace of a snail. There were three election judges that were sitting around smiling at everyone and wouldn’t be bothered to move quickly or be even remotely helpful.
The only woman working seemed to be disoriented and didn’t seem to have a good grasp on alphabetical order, even though she was in charge of locating the names of voters in the big books. Someone somewhere calls her “Big Mama.”
I finally reached the front of the line and gave her my name. She thumbed sloooooooowly through the A’s, and when she reached the B’s, she went past the area where my name should have appeared. At this point, I’m in danger of being late, so it was everything I could do not the snatch the book and find it myself. But then it became obvious that I wasn’t in that book either.
Big Mama sweetly offered to amble over to check my name on the list to find my correct polling place, but I didn’t have time.
All that, and I STILL haven’t cast my ballot. The moral of the story is to read all pieces of mail sent from the Board of Elections.
