Scribbles

Another four years have passed and it’s time again for the election everyone’s been waiting for. Since I’ve been carping about people to register and vote, I’ve come to realize that some of my friends simply cannot; something about being a foreigners…

So I’m sharing here with you the voting procedures in California. As usual, I’ve signed up for the mail-in vote. It saves me a trip to the local polling station, the wait in line, and helps out our government sponsored postal service lose less money, despite being a monopoly. Unlike many other states, California allows us to sign up as a permanent absentee voter. So you do it once and you’re set.

The package comes with the voting booklet and the ballot:

In the booklet, the pages describe each of the items we’re voting on. It includes national, state, and local issues to vote on. The first page is for all the marbles, the future President of the Yooo-nited States:

The numbers denote the oval to fill in on the ballot, which we’ll get to shortly. I’m not sure how they determined the ordering. So you pick your candidate and then you fill out the scantron-esque ballot:

The good news is that you don’t need a #2 pencil, and there aren’t any hanging chad issues (that may have changed the outcome of the world back in 2000). The bad news is that you have to fill in the oval in dark ink, so if you make a mistake, you need to go vote in person. I’m not sure how the machine reader can handle white-out, but I’m guessing it’s a bad idea.

I’m waiting for tomorrow’s debate before sending in my vote, although I doubt it will change my mind. Some people are complaining about people voting too early, even arguing that voting should occur on the day in person. While that sounds noble, I think this country should be grateful for people voting at all. For a nation that is so into democracy, the usual voting rates are shamefully low. Still, I can see some of the arguments for voting in person, such as preventing fraud. For instance my grandfather hijacked my grandma’s ballot and voted for McCain against her wishes. Yes, that makes him both crazy (for voting Republican based on a single, and misinformed, issue – Taiwan) and a felon.