yeahimadork.com

Today was the first time my polling place wasn’t by my parents’ house, because for the longest time, I wouldn’t re-register to vote because I wanted to evade jury duty (but dammit, they still found me).

Since I was eighteen, I voted in the garage of a family around the corner from my parents, who always had coffee, and orange juice and doughnuts for the voters (I’ve always voted in the morning, so I have no idea if a lunch and dinner buffet was served, but in my mind, I like to pretend there was). So, aside from shirking my judicial duties as an American citizen, I was primarily motivated by free doughnuts with my democratic process.

But the man did track me down, and I was automatically re-registered in my neighborhood (and also received a jury summons about a day later - bastards).

I live in the ghetto. Or as I prefer to call it, an “ethnically diverse neighborhood that is so high-class that the police helicopter patrols it nightly”. I had no idea what kind of turn-out there would be, or how the volunteers working at the polling place would be.

The first thing I noticed is that none of the signs were in English. And while I am all for everyone being able to read what they’re doing (although, really, if they’ve been in America long enough to vote, I’d hope they would have a grasp on English by now), a sign in English wouldn’t have killed them.

When I went to my check-in table, I noticed the average age of the people working there was about 124. I told the woman my last name, and when she found it (the only one on the list), she said, “Are you And…Ang…Ard… Angela?”

*sigh*

Seriously. It’s basic phonics. A-N-D-R-I-A. So I told her as much, and she looked at me and said, “I’m half-blind, I can’t hardly read anything these days.” Well, that’s comforting.

Then I had to move on to the next dinosaur and tell her my address. “What your address!”

“14-”

“What? 164…”

“No. 145-”

Then my half-blind friend from before leaned over and screamed in her ear, “Fourteen fifty-eight!!!” And no one blinked. Which means she probably had to do that EVERY TIME someone came in.

It made me seriously consider volunteering to work the polling place for the next election.

I was pleased with the turn-out, though. I hope people got off their asses this election and voted. I feel very strongly about voting, and people exercising their rights to do so. A co-worker told me this afternoon that she hasn’t “voted since Clinton.” Jesus.

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Awwww, really? I mean, who could have possibly seen this coming? First Reese and Ryan, and now this. If these celebrities can’t make it work, how is there any hope for the rest of us?

Gosh.