I went and voted today. Sorta. I think. I got my ballot via email, printed it out along with the cerificate that said I wasn't cheating (because if you were going to cheat on your ballot, you wouldn't dare lie on the certificate), then got two envelopes, stuffed the ballot in one, then that one in the other one along with the certificate, then unstuffed everything because of course I'd addressed the inner envelope, then did it the right way around.
Then I walked it four blocks from work, through the traditional market full of radishes and mystery meat on a stick and a guy carrying a pan of still-alive, wriggling, suffocating, piled-up-like-sandbags fish-- I'm afraid I'm going to have to alienate everyone sometime by writing more about that general topic-- to the post office and handed it and some funny coins to the nice young lady behind the counter.
Even though I vote in Florida, I'm hoping against hope that my vote will count. Apparently I learned nothing from the 2000 election.
In the end, though, I haven't had a satisfying voting experience since 1994. Back home in Ithaca, you went into a real booth with a curtain and a big red wooden lever. Pull it to the right, you hear a satisfying clunk and the curtain closes, you push down the little metal levers with a nice little click next to the cute little logos for the parties (eagle and star and liberty bell and torch) and the candidates' names, pull the lever to the left- thunk- and the levers reset, the curtain opens, and your votes register.
Now that's votin', you betcha!
Sorry... too much Sarah Palin on the 'net. Anyway, in St. Augustine you just take a pencil, go to a little six-dollar plastic table, connect two halves of an arrow to register a vote for a DEM or a REP, and stick it in a machine that may have been recycled from Lucy and Ethel's candymaking adventure. Not nearly as satisfying.
The absentee way is even less so. I just want it to count. If the Republicans win again, I swear I'll leave the coun... ah, never mind.
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