Election 2005, On Tape Delay

I have pages of painfully detailed notes on the election yesterday, since I had my laptop and took notes in between reading Steven Erikson’s Memories of Ice and assisting voters. Ultimately, I discarded most of it because the mechanics of an election just aren’t that interesting. We have 8 people sitting in a room at the Community Center. People come in, they vote, they leave. It’s really pretty dull, so I doubt any of you are interested in the minutiae of an election. If you are all that interested, I suggest you volunteer to help some time. You’ll learn everything you ever wanted to know about the process.

Instead, I have a general observation. Old people vote. That’s pretty much the only people that do. Some of these elderly citizens (I figure that sounds nicer than ‘decrepit geezers’) take their civic obligations seriously. We have one lady who votes every election. She brings her walker and her oxygen bottle and totters on in to vote. Every time I’m convinced she won’t be back, and every time she totters on in. Some of these folks look like they got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, but by gum, they are voting. Keep it in mind next time you feel like taking on the AARP. If you’re under the age of 40 and want some say in how things are run, you need to get people out to the polls. And good luck with that, I might add.

I also have an election day rant, which will come as a complete surprise to the faithful reader. For the dim-witted among you, it is against the law to be registered in more than one place. Given that electoral fraud is a constant concern, the gummint checks for duplicate registration. So when you were living in another state and registered to vote, your registration got canceled here in Texas. Similarly, if you registered to vote somewhere else in Texas, your registration here got canceled. If you think the issues on the ballot are so damned important, why the hell didn’t you re-register? Don’t come in and get all indignant about your right to vote being denied when you registered somewhere between 200 and 2,500 miles away. The process does require some minimal effort on your part. Furthermore, neither I nor anyone else here at the polls has a damned thing to do with the voter rolls. Don’t bitch at me that you got dropped because you left the precinct and voted elsewhere. I didn’t do it and I don’t care. Once again, had you registered, you could vote and this conversation wouldn’t be happening. Furthermore, don’t come in and argue what the law says, because you obviously don’t know. If you know that damned much about election law, you’d know simple things like your registration gets canceled when you register elsewhere. You also can’t walk up and fill out a form and vote today. The deadline is long past. In the brave new future where the government knows everything about you the instant it happens, all those problems will be gone. You will also be a chattel of the state and your vote won’t matter. In the meantime, you have the responsibility to make sure that you are registered where you live. Otherwise, no vote for you, idiot hippie.

I have yet to check the voting results statewide, but just judging on our precinct, Proposition 2 got passed overwhelmingly. To paraphrase the alternate judge, I’m disappointed that a portion of my fellow citizens will not have the privilege of standing in front of a judge while he gives away half of your stuff. The citizens of Texas have spoken and they have said: No marriage for you, homo! Not the choice I would have made, but I was overruled. The major peril of democracy is that your fellow citizens may disagree with you in large enough numbers to enforce their policy preferences. Oh, well. I hope your fellow citizens agreed with your choices yesterday.