11.02.2004
unchecked observations
My wife and I went to separate polling places today, but we went together to each place, with our niece. Here are some observations about voting in Montgomery County, Maryland:
- At each polling place, there were women with Kerry signs and Kerry badges and Kerry stickers out front, very near to the entrances. Seems to me that's not legal; but I'm not legalizationer.
- There were high-school age students helping point us toward the right lines.
- We had touch-screen machines. No paper receipt, no paper trail. They did, I assume to sort of mitigate whatever complaints or problems the system might call, do a couple of things. We signed our name in the poll worker's book. We signed a card handed to us by another poll worker, who also handed us an electronic card which we used to plug into the machine, and which we handed back afterward. When we were lead to our voting machine, the assistant put a slash through a number on a piece of paper hanging on the side; I didn't see how high the number was the woman crossed out for me, but I should've looked.
- I had a camera with me that I didn't use for anything. I do this a lot.
- This was my first time voting. I have much to say about the reasons, but I'm not sure I'm ever going to write about 'em on here. Regardless, I felt the buzz while touching that screen.
- I didn't vote in quite a few categories. I really wanted to learn about all the candidates, the judge candidates and the district representatives; I didn't know much about the Senate and House candidates but I voted in those races. I had boned up on the three stupid propositions that we had to vote on, so I voted on those.
Unrelated to Voting, I have too many things going on:
- The tv down here in the basement still doesn't work. I am dying to watch stupid pundits talking. Maybe it's better this way.
- Sister-in-law, both her kids, and my wife are all upstairs. They're making many noise, including the crying of the young 'un.
- My phone here's on speaker phone. It's been ringing, unanswered, for around half an hour. It's trying to connect me to the number that my cable-box is telling me I should call. I WANT MY FUCKING TV. I'm going to strangle something.
- I'm hearing NPR on my speakers from my computer, but I'm not really hearing anything because of all this other what-not. And it's not the manic, pointless, irresponsible coverage that I must have a hankerin' for. A few moments ago a woman with a british accent said, "legal wrangling."
- I hate the term "legal wrangling."
- Now some dude on here just said, "blogosphere." Twice.
- I hate the term, "blogosphere," but I'll probably get used to it.
- Twice.
- I think maybe my wife is yelling for me.
- Now this guy's talking about how for the next election there could be an "internet candidate" with a huge constituancy. A third party that gets its people, and money, that way. That sounds fucking ridiculous to me. Do we have some sort of concensus on these internets that I don't know about?
- I called the second number the cable box was giving me. It says to call it if it's after 9pm, which it isn't. But I got through to an automated system. After hitting 1s, 2s, and 3s in various orders for five minutes, the recording said that they'd just sent a signal to my cable box, and I should check it in 20 minutes. I imagine what that did is fuck up the cable upstairs. The option I hit that caused this (possibly fictional) signal to be sent was the button indicating that "one or all" of my cable boxes was malfunctioning or showing an error message. There was no indication that they were going to shoot fancy beams through the system at me.
