Election Day
It rained in SoCal last night. I awoke around 4 a.m. to the gentle lull of a light shower. I was so excited I got up and looked out my window at the dark space between buildings to see the outside world, sun-baked without precipitation forever, wet and shimmering. It was beautiful. A little shower rolled through on Sunday morning as well, the first rain since April.
The air was chilly with cool moisture. I kept my window wide open so I could pull the covers to my chin and let my body warm the cocoon of sheets enveloping me. I love sleeping when the temperature is crisp. Wafting through the screen and past my blinds was the scent of freshness, a welcome replacement for the smog and fine particulate matter hovering over the Los Angeles Basin. The rain washes the atmosphere clean. I could smell the nearby evergreens and palms. It was incredibly refreshing and I slept like a naïve and helpless baby.
When I got up for the day a few hours later, I showered, dressed, and, with my voter registration card in pocket, walked to my polling place to vote before catching the bus. In my hand I held a rolled up copy of the Orange County sample ballot, Huntington Beach version, which I used the night before to mark my choices. Before going to bed I consulted the state’s voter guide, the brief personal statements each local candidate included in the sample, and the editorial endorsements by local papers to decide who and what to vote for.
It was a short walk to my polling place, a nursing home near Trader Joes. It’s not the oddest polling place I’ve had. Our voting site on the southside of Iowa City was across the river at the city bus barn. In 2000 I cast my first ballot in the small office adjacent to the large garage where city buses were cleaned, repaired, and put to bed at night. A nursing home is rather unimaginative as California goes. Apparently anyone can volunteer their garage or kitchen as a polling place here. Most likely it’s a result of overcrowding. A picture on the New York Times website showed voters in San Francisco tucked into little booths inside a café. When I arrived there were two lines at the entrance to the room. I just chose the shorter, but apparently we were supposed to line-up according to our last name. There were no signs and no one was telling us what to do, but it worked out well enough.
As I stood waiting, there was a man talking quietly with a woman in the other line. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but when his voice stopped the woman said, “Oh! So the popular vote determines the electoral. I thought the electoral could override the popular.” I assumed she was talking about the state vote, and thought, “This bitch shouldn’t even be voting.” What a despicable testament of our country, the democracy people cross raging rivers and deadly deserts to join: Voters have no clue how our system (doesn’t) work. It made me sick.
Everyone waited quietly except a few annoying women who raved about a Saturday Night Live special that apparently aired last night.
“I missed it, but I bet it’ll be on again tonight,” another said.
Yes, watch sketch comedy and not election results. Of course, who am I to talk shit? I plan to not watch a single second of coverage, though it’ll be hard to avoid it if my roommate is while I cook. Last night he tuned into Chris Berman’s Monday Night Football interview of Obama and McCain. At about 10 p.m. I’ll check the paper websites.
My turn came. They found my name in the thick log, made me declare my address (not sure what that was about), and gave me a piece of paper. Then I went to another table where a woman generated a four-digit code I would use to initiate the voting machine and I walked to an open booth.
Although I noticed a row of conventional booths along one wall and paper ballots on a table, all the voting in Orange County is done electronically. I’m not fond of it, especially after seeing “Hacking Democracy,” a documentary about the Diebold Election Systems machines and how the memory cards can be tampered to digitally “stuff” ballot boxes. But who knows if any voting system is truthful and secure. There is a paper trail, though. The machine prints a few pages for your review before finalizing. Who knows where that print-out goes — it’s kept behind a plastic frame so you can’t tear it away like a receipt — but it’s there. As you know, I’m not convinced our electoral process isn’t just a smoke and mirrors display to make us think we have a choice, but I want to believe it makes a difference, that my vote actually counts, and the paper print-out is like the guarantee in “Tommy Boy,” saying “I’ll make things all better.”
So I twirled the little knob and made my choices. When I was done I hit the big red button and it was done. I voted. I got a sticker from the old lady at the entrance. I miss the metal clip buttons they gave out in Iowa. Stickers seem so cheap.
I left. The two lines were a little longer than when I arrived. No telling if people had figured out the alphabetical order; that wasn’t my problem anymore, so I didn’t worry about it. The rain had stopped a few hours before but the pavement and foliage were still wet. Water pooled in the dips and potholes of the street and sidewalks, and little streams trickled along the curbs to the nearest storm drain, carrying the fine smog particles each drop collected on its way to the ground. The dark clouds were evaporating or moving east, yielding to crystal clear blue skies.
The air was chilly with cool moisture. I kept my window wide open so I could pull the covers to my chin and let my body warm the cocoon of sheets enveloping me. I love sleeping when the temperature is crisp. Wafting through the screen and past my blinds was the scent of freshness, a welcome replacement for the smog and fine particulate matter hovering over the Los Angeles Basin. The rain washes the atmosphere clean. I could smell the nearby evergreens and palms. It was incredibly refreshing and I slept like a naïve and helpless baby.
When I got up for the day a few hours later, I showered, dressed, and, with my voter registration card in pocket, walked to my polling place to vote before catching the bus. In my hand I held a rolled up copy of the Orange County sample ballot, Huntington Beach version, which I used the night before to mark my choices. Before going to bed I consulted the state’s voter guide, the brief personal statements each local candidate included in the sample, and the editorial endorsements by local papers to decide who and what to vote for.
It was a short walk to my polling place, a nursing home near Trader Joes. It’s not the oddest polling place I’ve had. Our voting site on the southside of Iowa City was across the river at the city bus barn. In 2000 I cast my first ballot in the small office adjacent to the large garage where city buses were cleaned, repaired, and put to bed at night. A nursing home is rather unimaginative as California goes. Apparently anyone can volunteer their garage or kitchen as a polling place here. Most likely it’s a result of overcrowding. A picture on the New York Times website showed voters in San Francisco tucked into little booths inside a café. When I arrived there were two lines at the entrance to the room. I just chose the shorter, but apparently we were supposed to line-up according to our last name. There were no signs and no one was telling us what to do, but it worked out well enough.
As I stood waiting, there was a man talking quietly with a woman in the other line. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but when his voice stopped the woman said, “Oh! So the popular vote determines the electoral. I thought the electoral could override the popular.” I assumed she was talking about the state vote, and thought, “This bitch shouldn’t even be voting.” What a despicable testament of our country, the democracy people cross raging rivers and deadly deserts to join: Voters have no clue how our system (doesn’t) work. It made me sick.
Everyone waited quietly except a few annoying women who raved about a Saturday Night Live special that apparently aired last night.
“I missed it, but I bet it’ll be on again tonight,” another said.
Yes, watch sketch comedy and not election results. Of course, who am I to talk shit? I plan to not watch a single second of coverage, though it’ll be hard to avoid it if my roommate is while I cook. Last night he tuned into Chris Berman’s Monday Night Football interview of Obama and McCain. At about 10 p.m. I’ll check the paper websites.
My turn came. They found my name in the thick log, made me declare my address (not sure what that was about), and gave me a piece of paper. Then I went to another table where a woman generated a four-digit code I would use to initiate the voting machine and I walked to an open booth.
Although I noticed a row of conventional booths along one wall and paper ballots on a table, all the voting in Orange County is done electronically. I’m not fond of it, especially after seeing “Hacking Democracy,” a documentary about the Diebold Election Systems machines and how the memory cards can be tampered to digitally “stuff” ballot boxes. But who knows if any voting system is truthful and secure. There is a paper trail, though. The machine prints a few pages for your review before finalizing. Who knows where that print-out goes — it’s kept behind a plastic frame so you can’t tear it away like a receipt — but it’s there. As you know, I’m not convinced our electoral process isn’t just a smoke and mirrors display to make us think we have a choice, but I want to believe it makes a difference, that my vote actually counts, and the paper print-out is like the guarantee in “Tommy Boy,” saying “I’ll make things all better.”
So I twirled the little knob and made my choices. When I was done I hit the big red button and it was done. I voted. I got a sticker from the old lady at the entrance. I miss the metal clip buttons they gave out in Iowa. Stickers seem so cheap.
I left. The two lines were a little longer than when I arrived. No telling if people had figured out the alphabetical order; that wasn’t my problem anymore, so I didn’t worry about it. The rain had stopped a few hours before but the pavement and foliage were still wet. Water pooled in the dips and potholes of the street and sidewalks, and little streams trickled along the curbs to the nearest storm drain, carrying the fine smog particles each drop collected on its way to the ground. The dark clouds were evaporating or moving east, yielding to crystal clear blue skies.
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