Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Voted

In Washington State we have all vote-by-mail elections.  They send you a ballot, you fill it out, and send it back by midnight election day (I think).  I like this because it's easy, convenient, and I can have the ballot there while I'm googling about people I'm not sure about.  Actually, this year, there was only one of those, a non-partisan judge position.

But I don't like vote-by-mail because I like the idea of the community coming together to vote.  You meet your neighbors,you put some effort into voting, and I always took my kids to inculcate them in the responsibilities of being a citizen.  But since vote-by-mail it's sorta "hey, kids, I'm voting" and they glance up from the X-Box (actually, they are all of voting age now; scary thought).   Plus it seems vote-by-mail has too many ways to game the system (one woman registered her dog to vote).

Unfortunately, I live in a very blue state so my vote for president doesn't really matter, much.  But it still feels important to vote and there's a lot of "down ballot" votes, too (Senator, Congressman, etc.).  Just wish I didn't have to wait two weeks to find out who won.

1 comment:

  1. Funny, just today I received an email from an old high school friend who lives in Seattle and said he, too, had already mailed in his ballot.

    I'm from Texas (Houston to be more specific) and early voting started yesterday. Today I went thinking I'd go ahead and "getter done." Not so. The line wrapped around the entire library. Will try again tomorrow, although I can see the validity of being able to sit at the computer and actually do some homework before casting a vote.

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