Rant #2,256: I'll Be Back Up On My Feet

Well, did you vote yesterday?

I kind of look at voting as the common person's super power.

It is the way that we, just your normal friends and neighbors, can impact the way this country is run.

If you don't use this power, it lays dormant and doesn't do anything for you.

Would Superman not use, let's say, his X-Ray vision because he was too lazy to do so?

I don't think so, and it is the same thing with voting.

I voted, as I said I would, at 6:00 a.m. in the morning.

I got to my polling place, and even though I arrived at about three minutes to 6:00 a.m., there were about 10 people there ahead of me.

So yes, even at that hour, the place was jumping!

I went to the wrong table to sign in and get my ballot, but I quickly moved over to the correct table, signed in, picked up my ballot, and filled it out.

Unlike in other years, the pens actually worked this time--I had to break off the top of the pen, a small removal of something protecting the top of it--but I then filled out the ballot, went back to the table, was told I could put my ballot in the machine that secures the ballot, and before you knew it, I was done.

It was 6:05 a.m., so all of this actually took me about five minutes to do.

That's it. Five minutes.

I kind of prefer the old way to collect our votes, which was with the voting machine.

There was more intrigue to it.

You closed the curtain, punched in your choices, and opened the curtain. And you were done.

The problem with this method, at least in New York, was that these voting machines dated from seemingly the Roosevelt Administration--FDR, not Teddy--and many thought that they had outlived their usefulness, so they were discarded a few years ago for the new, modern method, which I don't think people realized at the time could lead to so many other potential problems.

I know that possibility of infiltration by foreign governments aside, there were years that the machine that I had to feed the ballot into did not work correctly, and I had a bit of trouble getting my ballot accepted by the machine.

I needed assistance, which I got, but I wondered if my ballot was being counted.

I had been through this before. One year, when the voting machines were still being used, my polling place had one occasion where not one of the machines worked, and everyone had to fill out paper ballots. It was during the younger Bush's second run for the presidency, which was filled with a lot of questions, in particular in Florida, but I often wondered if my ballot was counted that particular time.

But yesterday, everything seemed to go smoothly, so I had absolutely nothing to complain about.

Last year, everything pretty much went smoothly with the process, too, but as I was standing at my table and ready to sign in, some guy out of nowhere stepped in front of me, and in front of others, and cut me off, basically. The people there didn't say a thing to him, but I did, and I also said something to the workers for allowing him to cut off the line.

This year, there was none of that, which was really good.

In and out--no excuse not to vote!

Look, I know that around the country, others had major problems voting, whether it was machines that did not work, long lines, or whatever.

I had no such problems, thank goodness.

Whoever the winners and losers were, at least the populace had a go at them, and now, those endless and nasty political ads can stop polluting our airwaves--

Until next year, of course.

And now, we can all get back on our feet, and move on and ahead without hearing these diatribes.

Good. Real good.

Let's all move on.