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.

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By David Drucker | Filed in Politics, US | October 17, 2008 10:37 pm

8 Comments to “I Voted Today”

  1. AvatarMikeFitz
    Posted: Oct 17th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
    1

    Con­grat­u­la­tions, David. This part of “the rest of the world” thanks you.
  2. Avatarheather
    Posted: Oct 18th, 2008 at 9:10 am
    2

    as a cana­dian, i’m fas­ci­nated with amer­i­can bal­lot­ing. espe­cially that you actu­ally get to vote when there is only one can­di­date run­ning for a posi­tion (i.e. coun­cil­lor or reg­is­ter of probate).

    our bal­lots are small and sim­ple in comparison.

    it makes me just a lit­tle jealous!
  3. Avatarheather
    Posted: Oct 18th, 2008 at 9:10 am
    3

    p.s. thank you for post­ing the photo of your bal­lot. that was awesome.
  4. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Oct 18th, 2008 at 9:53 am
    4
    Author Comment

    Thanks Mike and Heather -

    I actu­ally won­dered if it was ‘OK’ to post the bal­lot, but as far as I know there’s no law against doing that. It was con­ve­nient that I had a sep­a­rate dupli­cate to scan because I was able to scan it after I had mailed the oth­ers off to Massachusetts.

    Look­ing for­ward to vot­ing in a Cana­dian elec­tion some day, no mat­ter how small and sim­ple the bal­lots are. :)

  5. AvatarWest End Bob
    Posted: Oct 18th, 2008 at 10:01 am
    5

    My bal­lot was mailed back to Florida about two weeks ago now. You’re right, it was a rather odd feel­ing fill­ing it out up here. Unlike Mass­a­chu­setts, how­ever, our part of Florida is pri­mar­ily repugli­can can­di­dates run­ning unop­posed. I, too gave the vote to “the man the rest of the world wants” although my actual choice was Kucinich.

    That’s not going to hap­pen in my life­time, however .…
  6. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Oct 18th, 2008 at 10:30 am
    6
    Author Comment

    Pam was a Kucinich fan, too. I know what you mean about it not going to hap­pen in your life­time (or any of our life­times, for that matter).

    I think there’s some­thing wrong when 2 (or more) states like MA and FL can have the vast major­ity of their can­di­dates, from either party, run­ning unop­posed. It just doesn’t serve any­body when there is so much power with no viable oppos­ing point of view.

    That said, if the Democ­rats do lose the pres­i­dency this time, it really is time to get rid of them and get a real oppo­si­tion party. Oth­er­wise, it’s just an illu­sion of choice.
  7. pingback pingback:
    Posted: Oct 18th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
    7
    US Presidential ballot paper « MikeFitz with overflow bit set…

    […] Drucker, cast his vote in the US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on Fri­day.  I was inter­ested to see an image of the actual bal­lot paper on his blog.  I never knew there were so many other can­di­dates for pres­i­dent besides McCain […]
  8. AvatarMargaret
    Posted: Nov 4th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
    8

    Thanks for post­ing your bal­lot paper — that was very infor­ma­tive for us here in Aus­tralia fol­low­ing the elec­tion results on-line today. In Oz the bal­lot papers look very dif­fer­ent, and we can’t pro­pose ini­tia­tives for law reform on the bal­lot over here either.
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