Slow, Hot, Moist, and Smooth
That title describes my voting experience today in my polling place on Toledano between St. Charles Avenue and Carondolet.
Some twenty-five people were in line ahead of me when I arrived to vote. Somehow, as if the weather had conformed itself to the indecision lately seen in the polls, the sun was shining but a very, very light rain was falling, too. The air was saturated. We have only two voting machines for our precinct, so the line just crept forward. I spent about fifteen minutes standing in line outside before getting indoors, where I spent perhaps another twenty minutes in line. Everything was orderly inside. One of the older, black church-ladies running the station methodically checked IDs and voter registration cards (your choice!), checked names against her computer-printed roll, collected signatures on the roll, and called out names and spellings to the other official, who hand-wrote each name in the next blank line of her double-column listing. A third lady reset the voting machines prior to each use. Thank heavens for people willing to take on such mind-numbing civic tasks; nor do I think one could have wrung a single drop of voting fraud or intimidation out of these nice women. Of course, I have no earthly idea what goes on inside the voting machines; for all I know, mine could have stifled a mechanical chuckle and switched my vote from the Supreme Wickedness Party to the Party of Sweetness and Light. Drat, foiled again!
Related posts:
- That was easy…
- A fatal mix of “misinformation and authority”
- Voting experience
- Poll what?
- Tendercrisp vs. Spicy Tendercrisp - Election Time

