I voted today. Did you?

After visiting the doctor, I drove to the elementry school (after all, it was on my way home). It was definately the wrong time to vote. The busses were filing through the campus and there was a long line of Cary soccer-moms in mini-vans causing a big, bad traffic jam at the little school. I was in the wrong line and didn’t know it. The randomly placed flags on the vans threw me off. I thought it was the voting lane. It was the kid-pickup line. As I didn’t have a kid to pick-up, it was definately not the right lane for me.

The visitor parking was full, so I parked in the administration parking (despite the omnious towing signs). It was pouring down rain. To complicate the matters further, I was sniffling as I was shuffling my sick self into the voting corridor.

I picked up the pen that the kind older lady offered as I started filling out forms. “Wow! Another lefty!” She continued with an explanation, “It seems like we have had at least one out of every five people here today be one of you south-paws.” I smiled as I continued to fill out the form. Oddly enough, I didn’t have to show any form of I.D.

I proceeded to the next table and picked up my ballot. No butterflies, no chads, no shady ATM-like proprietary electronic voting boxes were involved. Here in this district, it’s as simple as connecting the arrow to point at the candidate of your selection, as long as you use the pen they provide. Simple enough. It was actually easier than the old computer-graded bubble tests of high school especialy since there was no way to get a completely wrong answer.

I stood in front of one of the shielded boxes. It was too easy to vote for all Democrat or Republican. All you had to do was to essentially complete one arrow to be finished! For taking the effort to go out and vote, I hope no one took the easy route. Free voting for is privelage that other countries (Iraq, for example) don’t have. We have to make sure we research the candidates and vote not simply on the party’s campaigns, but for what the candidate stands for (taking into account their past records). Sometimes, sure, it might be like choosing for the lesser of two evils, but at least it’s not a total sell-out. Having the auto-party option at the top makes it not only unfair for all of the Republicans and the Democrats running for offices, but virtually negates any likelihood that one from another party (Libertarian, Green Party, etc.) or someone running as an independent will ever make it to office.

Honestly, I did a bit of homework on which candidate to cast my vote towards. I’m not going to go into all the details, but I chose a mix of Republicans, Democrats, and others to whom I felt could best represent the issues and values that I hold important.

Obviously, for Congress, it does matter which party you vote for, as the majority rules in the house. It’s a shame, but it’s pretty much true. Luckily, with positions in less of a media spotlight, there can be a bit more leniency on party lines.

I hope that a lot of people put some thought and effort to go out and vote today. It’s not a perfect system by any stretch, but it’s what we have, and it works.

As far as the disproportionate amount of left-handers in the polls, I wonder if that is either because we’re more concerned about politics or if the past few Presidental races had any influence. You do know that Ronald Regan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and even H. Ross Perot were all left-handed, right? Of course, it could be written off as living in an area which might happen to have a larger-than 10% base of left-handed individuals (but I have no evidence for or against that). *shrug*