The Squire and I went yesterday afternoon to cast our ballots. Rather than go to our regular place we were directed to a Community Center, about 5 miles in the opposite direction. Actually, we were quite pleased at the change. There were about twenty five voting booths, rather than the five they had at our usual polling place, and five or six scanners instead of only one. The door to the gym was in the center of the hallway but the line stretched from one side of the building to the other, made a U turn and came back to the middle. One lady had brought a book, and stepped forward in line without missing a word. My kind of people.
As we were signing in the man on the other side of me reached for his wallet and asked if he needed to show any ID. The clerk chuckled and shook her head. “This isn’t Georgia, sir.” We gave our name and when the clerk had it on the screen, we had to tell her our birthdate and address, so it was pretty easy to prove who you were.
One of the docents (I love that word!) was a young woman wearing a hijab, who still had an accent. I smiled and told her we were glad to see her here, and she replied she was glad to be able to help. “And I voted yesterday!” At least some people take their civic duty seriously. As if I had any room to talk. I’ll have to see how I can help next time around.
When we picked up our ballots I asked the woman how it was going. She said they had had 1200 voters on Thursday and it looked as if it would be a lot more than that by the end of the day. If it was this busy at 3:00 or 3:30, it was going to be a mob when the “after work on Friday crowd” showed up.
I simply cannot imagine trying to have everybody vote on one day! Dear Heavens!
thisendoftheswamp 