voting night contacts
I
voted absentee three weeks ago, so I don't have any great stories about voting day like the many commenters at
kottke.org or
the chutry experiment. My friends voted via touchscreen, and got their "I voted touchscreen" stickers.
When I went to campus tonight, there were non-partisan signs (in equal parts red and blue paint, that is) all over the place that said "Vote Now! It's Sexy!" If there's one way to catch the attention of college students, sex would be it.
I walked past a lot of kids (probably first-time voters, looking at the age range) carrying their blue California absentee voting envelopes off to a polling place to turn them in. At crosswalks, kids were talking about how they hoped everything would be ok because their ID addresses might not match their registration because of school and moving, etc and one of them would pipe up with "provisional ballot!" Made me kinda weepy, kids knowing their voting rules.
I stopped at one of the hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants that I love so much (predominantly Asian campus, so there are plenty of these) and as I was waiting for my soup the woman behind the counter (also the owner, and married to the Korean man who runs my greasy spoon breakfast diner next door) immediately said "Did you vote?" To which I replied "of course!" with a big thumbs up and then thought "shit, I hope I didn't just flip her off" as I ran through my mental list of rest-of-world gesture translations and figured it was ok as long as she wasn't Chinese-Nigerian (it's an obscene gesture in Nigeria). She's not a citizen so she can't vote, but she said she was making sure she told every student who came in that day, to go vote. She asked if there were troubles and I said that there were some issues, and mentioned the thousands of calls to the voting help lines, etc. She was aghast that we Americans hadn't figured out how to make it all work yet. I agreed.
Still fretting about this election, although I live in a very blue state. I kind of like my freedom, liberties and prefer my presidents not believe they're ordained by God and not require oaths of allegiance to
them. I'm just quirky that way.
