Tuesday, November 4, 2008

My Election Day Comedy of Errors


In hindsight I definitely checked my precinct yesterday. It could have avoided my latest series of panic attack.

Anyway wanting to make this most important day feel special I had put on my leather jacket and headed to what had been my usual polling place for the last two years. I was very happy to see that where in the past I'd barely ever seen anymore then four voters at a time had what could pass as a crowd.

Now unfortunately my voter's card is an old one that still has my last address on it. While a point of frustration, and something I've been trying to fix ever since i've moved to my new address, It has never been a problem. All I have to do is have my driver's license and look up my precinct in the list. So you can imagine my surprise when I didn't see my name on the list. The volunteer's were nice enough, but in my state of agitation what they probably meant as being a soothing tone to me sounded damn patronizing. They asked if i wanted to fill out a provisional ballot but since I was pretty sure this was my fault, and since I was getting close to having a very public tantrum, I declined and left.

After I got home, I had a very frustrating hour surfing and making phone calls trying to figure out the solution to my mistake. After may busy signals, talking to several well meaning, overworked and clueless volunteers I finally found out my precinct number and that I had indeed gone to the wrong place.

So I set out again to vote. The correct place was at a community center that was even more crowded than the other place. After a short wait I got my turn to vote. The only open privacy booth was a sit down table where someone had swiped the chair. So the price of my civic duty is a slight kink in my back. But at least I now have it over with. And feeling good about it.

1 comment:

Christopher Gwyn said...

I am absolutely sure that they were not intending to be at all patronizing. Those of your readers in King County concerned about facing the same adversity can check to see what their polling place is at this King County Elections link: https://www.metrokc.gov/elections/voterlookup.aspx