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That voting thing
Nov. 5th, 2008 07:46 amI kind of figured there'd be some long lines at the polling places yesterday. That plus the fact that UPS had called and left a message on Monday that they had a package that someone *had* to be home to sign for (as opposed to them just leaving it at the complex office) made me decide to do 5 hours at work and vote in the afternoon.
So I left at noon, got home and waited for the UPS guy. Turns out the package was a case for my TomTom GPS. Why Amazon had tagged it as signature required I dunno. I headed on over to the school that is my polling place just after 1.
I'd figured with the huge lines being reported and the teensy parking lot at that school that my best bet would be to park at the strip mall about a half mile down the road. On a whim, I drove up to the school first and saw there were a number of empty spaces. Upon walking around to the other side of the school where the voting entrance was, I discovered that there was no line at all. When I walked in, there was a couple just checking in and they walked off to the booth thingies just as I got to the "M-Z" table. Got my ballot, filled in lil circles, and was out of there in around 5 minutes.
The people said there'd been a long long line all morning. It kind of reminds me of Friday rush hour traffic - everyone leaves early to avoid the crowd, thus creating a big crowd and a long backup. Go figure.
I'm very glad the election is finally over. A few years ago, I'd joked with some folks that someday elections might get decided by people just voting for whichever candidate sent the least number of annoying robocalls. That kinda held true this year. Okay, so it wasn't the calls that did it, but the results did match the 'annoyingness' level of the campaigning I encountered at home. I didn't keep accurate track, but this is close:
McCain Obama
Robocalls 22 0
Live callers 6 1
Campaigners knocking on door 0 8*
Flyers left on door 0 10*
Flyers in mail 12 1
The robocall number is based upon messages I received on my answering machine. Same goes for the live callers, so there could've been more of those who just didn't leave messages. Heck, one night last week I received *four* calls from McCain supporters between 8 and 9pm.
*There could easily have been more people who knocked on the door. I'm just going by the flyers left behind when I didn't answer because I was either not at home or was in the shower or whatever. Also, I did find a couple when I left for work yesterday and one day last week that'd been left without a knock.
So I left at noon, got home and waited for the UPS guy. Turns out the package was a case for my TomTom GPS. Why Amazon had tagged it as signature required I dunno. I headed on over to the school that is my polling place just after 1.
I'd figured with the huge lines being reported and the teensy parking lot at that school that my best bet would be to park at the strip mall about a half mile down the road. On a whim, I drove up to the school first and saw there were a number of empty spaces. Upon walking around to the other side of the school where the voting entrance was, I discovered that there was no line at all. When I walked in, there was a couple just checking in and they walked off to the booth thingies just as I got to the "M-Z" table. Got my ballot, filled in lil circles, and was out of there in around 5 minutes.
The people said there'd been a long long line all morning. It kind of reminds me of Friday rush hour traffic - everyone leaves early to avoid the crowd, thus creating a big crowd and a long backup. Go figure.
I'm very glad the election is finally over. A few years ago, I'd joked with some folks that someday elections might get decided by people just voting for whichever candidate sent the least number of annoying robocalls. That kinda held true this year. Okay, so it wasn't the calls that did it, but the results did match the 'annoyingness' level of the campaigning I encountered at home. I didn't keep accurate track, but this is close:
McCain Obama
Robocalls 22 0
Live callers 6 1
Campaigners knocking on door 0 8*
Flyers left on door 0 10*
Flyers in mail 12 1
The robocall number is based upon messages I received on my answering machine. Same goes for the live callers, so there could've been more of those who just didn't leave messages. Heck, one night last week I received *four* calls from McCain supporters between 8 and 9pm.
*There could easily have been more people who knocked on the door. I'm just going by the flyers left behind when I didn't answer because I was either not at home or was in the shower or whatever. Also, I did find a couple when I left for work yesterday and one day last week that'd been left without a knock.