Ballot Busters '08

I voted on my way in to work this morning. Our polling place is a retirement community that we circled for twenty minutes trying to find. It wasn't until the handwritten sign "NO PARKING PARK ON STREET TO VOTE" that we knew where we were going. So I parked in the lot and strolled in to vote.
I am not even being facetious when I say that I was the only voter there that wasn't in a rascal. I was also cut off by two people in said scooters while waiting in line. This is my life.
Anyway, I was all ready to go in there and demand to see the paper trail from my vote on the machine (this sounds paranoid, I know. But I do NOT trust those electronic machines). and was surprised to see that they were using paper ballots. Which, of course, I was the only person who didn't know how to fill it out. It's not just a "write a name" thing, but rather a punch card, thingy. Furthermore, as a registered independent, I had a slightly more confusing one.
Yes, I had a room full of seniors sighing loudly as I struggled to figure out how to vote. Huh. so that's what it's like.

In any case, I was told later that there are 27,000 machines currently in storage in nearby Riverside. They've been used twice. I don't even want to think about how much money that wasted, or how much of it, through Diebold, went into candidates' pockets.
Anyway, super tuesday is over for me. It was nice to get to vote in a Primary for the first time since registering Green in 2002, and it was nice to vote in a primary that's early enough to matter for the first time since, well, ever. But that said I just am sick to death of this and can't wait until it's over so that work can actually get done. I'm far more interested in the Senate races in Colorado, New Hampshire and New Mexico than I am about the presidential crap. Unless McCain wins. Then I start praying.

oh wait, and Minnesota. If Al Franken gets elected to the senate, I will kiss each and every Minnesotan on the mouth. I just think it'd be funny to have Stuart Smalley in the U.S. Senate. Maybe he could talk some confidence into the Democratic party.

On a completely different subject, the CIA admitted to torturing three people. Hey assholes, do you think that after denying it for five years that we'll believe you when you admit that yes, you did use it, but only on three people?

I think my file just grew.