Democracy Maybe

I just voted, and it felt... icky. The people at the poll were STOO-PITT and unfriendly. Maybe I'm a little bit paranoid about this election but I felt I was being regarded suspiciously. They couldn't find my name at first and I literally had to find it myself, point to it, and keep my finger their for about 15 seconds until the light went on in this not-very-good-english-speaking man's head. Then I had to show i.d. Why? I asked, while simultaneously showing it to them. Uhh... there's a lot of new rules was the answer. So I signed my name and they gave me some little piece of paper. Then I had to give this little piece of paper to someone else who let me in the new electronic voting machine.

When my mother returned from casting her ballot she told me that she tried to do it but nothing was working. She told the poll worker who then turned some knob in the back of it while exclaiming, "Oh, thank you."

You see the problem was it wasn't turned on.

At 10:30am, four and a half hours after the poll opened. And people were pretty much getting funneled to this one machine. I'm pretty confident that the mostly elderly or semi-retarded poll workers have absolutely zero familiarity with e-voting, or computers for that matter.

I didn't get any paper reciept of my vote or anything. For all I know the little piece of paper I had to give to the poll worker went right down the rabbit hole. There was just a vibe of strangeness about the whole ordeal, and I did not like it.

Why are some people required to show I.D. and not others? Black people in the inner city do not like showing their I.D. to unfriendly white strangers. So what's the criteria? There was just way too much opportunity for confusion. Voting should be as simple as possible. I'm holding my breath...