Election

Damn it, I really wanted to keep talking about my vacation. I really did, but it's Super Tuesday, and I need to talk about the election. So we'll take a brief pause on vaction and talk about my voting experience today.

I registered a few months ago, and the state of New York requires party registration (I registered as a Libertarian). So google-mapped (is that even a verb?) my poll location, and it's litterally a block and a half away. The polls opened at 6 am, and I got there about 7 am to vote. Talk about a complete cluster ####. People were litterally just herded into groups in there, and thank God I got there when I did. Had I gotten there later, I would have litterally had to wait 4 plus hours. Couple that with the fact that the voting machines are about 50 years old, and you have the recipe for a beautiful mess. Let's pause for a second. The presidential election is an even you can pretty much set your watch to. I mean, it does sneak up on you every FOUR years. You would think the right people in charge would have the foresight to replace these dinosaur machines. To give you a better idea of what I had to deal with, here are these old school machines. You go behind a curtain, you look at this kind of grid in front of you, and you flip a switch for the person you want to as president, state rep, etc. Once you've done that, you pull a huge lever and that's how you cast your vote. I felt like I was working a cotton gin of sorts, which would make Eli Whitney proud. My biggest concern once I voted was that I did NOT get an "I Voted" sticker. I really like the satisfaction of voting and showing the world I voted, and I didn't see anything like that offered. Maybe they don't give Libertarians stickers for voting, I don't know...and the more that I think about it, I really want one.

I'm not going to wax political here, because I really try to keep this blog free of any political kind of rhetoric (let's just not get into it), but if you asked me who I voted for, if you know anything about me at all, you should be able to surmise that one yourself. If you ask me who I think will win, I think Obama is going to win the election. Watching Fox News now, they're saying McCain needs to win 5 out of the 6 following states (Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennslyvania and Florida). That's a lot, and it's too close to call right now. Who knows. I will say this about America; good for you for getting out and voting. Our electorate had become very appathetic over the past few years, and to see people getting out there and becoming more politically active is good. Now if we can only explain to some of these people how the electoral college works, we'd be cooking. However, I did realize something today about America and Americans. We're essentially a bunch of spoiled teenagers in this country. I'm not saying things can't improve, and I definitely have my gripes with the government, but when you sit back and think about it, we have a lot to be grateful for. We don't have a police state (at least not as of this writing), most of us have a roof over our head, we don't have people starving in this country (obesity and heart disease are two gi-normous problems facing many people in this country, primarily the poor). Oh, and how many teenagers do you see sporting cell phones, ipods, and their own computer? Yeah, exactly. We're just like those spoiled teenagers. The second anythings goes wrong, or if our next proverbial Christmas isn't as good as our last, we bitch and moan. It's a pretty good simile if you think about it. OK, rant off. We'll get back to fun, hilarious vaction stories later this week. End transmission!