Random Bits

So I went to vote just now. The polling place for me is in the basement anything-room of an elementary school. You walk in through the front door, go down a set of steps and there is a room about thirty foot square that both precinct 4 and precinct 5 vote (one on each side of the room). I wandered in at about 1:55pm. I stepped up and gave street name, street number and my name and they handed me my ballot - a legal-size cardstock paper with a front and a back. The booths are cheap particle board partitions, and the pens are provided to mark the ovals. No curtains here (where I used to live had little booths with privacy curtains - it was all very 19th century). After filling in about ten little ovals (mostly people running unopposed for all the state stuff - vote for ONE and only one name on the ballot kinda made me giggle), I checked out (street name and number and my name again) I put my ballot through the machine and wandered out again. Door to door? Twenty minutes, tops.

Business at the polls was brisk - but there were no lines, nobody waiting. And the questions on the ballot were pretty simple - the only one that has gotten any play with the media was Question One - about whether we should do away with the state income tax. Question Two was about de-criminalizing the holding of less than an ounce of pot (fines, not jail time), and Question Three was about outlawing dog racing in the state.

All in all a very easy experience. I always try to go vote after lunch time because there is generally a slow period between parents picking up kids at school and people coming home from work. I was about the 1200 person to vote at my polling place (the machine counts the ballots as they come in).