I Voted Today

Just in the nick of time, my offi­cial Elec­tion Bal­lot arrived via UPS. Oddly enough, two Bal­lots arrived. One had my old Cam­bridge address on the sticker and the other had the new one I have here in Van­cou­ver. I think that the rea­son for the dupli­ca­tion is because I applied for one this year, even though I was prob­a­bly going to be get­ting one any­way (since I’m still reg­is­tered to vote in Mass­a­chu­setts. I did not send in both. Voter fraud is not some­thing I ever want to be asso­ci­ated with.

It was strange, fill­ing it out at home, and at the moment I filled in the oval for Obama, he was giv­ing a stump speech on the tele­vi­sion, so I made a small salute to him as I voted. You can’t do that in a vot­ing booth. Yes, an odd feeling.

In addi­tion to the Pres­i­den­tial ticket, there were a few other votes to make. Sen­taor Kerry was run­ning against Jef­frey K. Beatty, a Repub­li­can and Robert J. Under­wood, a Lib­er­tar­ian I’d never heard of. I expect that one will be a blowout for Kerry, but I don’t blame those guys for try­ing. The other seats, includ­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Dis­trict Coun­cil­lor, Sen­a­tor in Gen­eral Court, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Gen­eral Court and Reg­is­ter of Pro­bate were all Democ­rats run­ning unop­posed. Finally, there were 3 ques­tions, one an ini­tia­tive to lower the per­sonal tax rate (while this really doesn’t affect us, I was curi­ous as to the why, aside from the usual rea­sons — every­one always wants lower taxes), another that essen­tially decri­m­inilizes Mar­i­juanna (woo hoo!), and the last would out­law dog rac­ing. It will be inter­est­ing to see how that one goes.

Later, I went down to the post office with Pam’s bal­lot and mine (she got her’s a day or so ago). I walked down to the one in the Kid’s Mar­ket on Granville Island, which is prob­a­bly the clos­est one to us. As I was wait­ing in line, a fel­low noticed the offi­cial envelopes and asked if I was vot­ing early. I told him I was, and also con­firmed that I was in fact vot­ing for the same fel­low the rest of the world wanted. He wished me good luck, and again, it felt like one of the strangest votes I’ve ever made.