(I love that comic. More here.)
I voted this morning at the local elementary school. I knew it was going to be busy, and I expected a wait, so my expectations were set pretty low. I planned on the possibility of being there for a while, and my plan was pretty accurate.
For the first 45 mins or so, things were really moving. The line ran the entire length of the school hallway, but it was shuffling forward at a regular pace. No worries, no problems. Plenty of time to say good morning to people from the neighborhood, and to meet new people near me in line.
Things began to suck when we got closer to the cafeteria, where the actual voting was taking place. In order to validate the voter registration, entry to the cafeteria was broken up into 3 sections of the alphabet by last name. A-G on the left, H-O in the middle, and P-Z on the right. My wife, with her hyphenated last name, jumped ahead of me and about 20-30 other people. Cool for her, not realizing yet how badly I was about to get effed.
I started noticing that two sections of the alphabet were moving very rapidly, while my section was rather stagnant. More and more people got called ahead of my group. I'm still not stressed, really, but starting to wonder how the array of names could be that lopsided. I'm still in the hall outside the cafeteria, so I can't really figure out the details of the situation yet.
After a while, I'm getting a little worked up. Between 75-100 people with lucky last names bestowed upon them have passed our sorry lot in the hallway. The election hostess is passing BS and illogical excuses about how the names have been divided, and our group was just really large. The words weren't hers, she was just relaying the same BS that somebody inside had told her to say.
FINALLY, over 1/2 an hour later, I get into the cafeteria. My wife has voted, left the school, driven to work, and already started her day. The first 45 minutes in line covered the entire length of the school. The last 30 paces had taken another 45 minutes. But now that I was inside, I could identify the source of my stress: BINGO LADY.
Bingo Lady was validating I.D. and cross-referencing names against the master book; the gate-keeper into the actual polling station. Does "Bingo Lady" put a picture in your mind? If so, I'm sure it's accurate. She was near 80, shaky, mumbling, and craning her head back to read the master book thru the bottom half of her bi-focals. And she was REALLY EFFING SLOW. She could have spotted the hell out of B-14 or I-23, but looking up last names alphabetically just wasn't in her skill set.
Bless her heart, she was out there working the election, which is 1000x more responsibility than I took today. But DAMN did somebody at that polling station put her in the wrong position. There were a dozen other people who could have been shuffled around to make it work better. There had to be someone on that team with better vision and reading skills, and I'm sure there was other tasks that Bingo Lady could have managed very well. The fucktards in charge of the day simply failed on organizing their people.
Each year after voting, I walk out of the school with a smile and sense of pride for doing my part. Today I left bitter. My smile today was stolen by the fucktards.
I will happily wait 2 hours, if that's what it takes to vote. As it was, I waited 45 minutes to vote, plus another 45 minutes for stupidity.
Side note, much happier news - my kid voted in his first election today. I'm pretty proud that he stepped up and did his part,too. Not a lot of young'uns do that.
Now that I'm done venting, I'd really like to hear your voting stories. For real. Click here, or use the link below, and lemme know....
