Got my Haloween scare...

[dragojustine]

I just cast my vote.

Let me say that I find in-person early voting to be sadly anti-climactic. It's worth it, of course, to avoid lines and have time to sort out any trouble and make sure you DO get to vote, but you just lose a lot of that electric Election Day tingle, without the real pleasure of absentee voting. I love absentee voting. Having your ballot and access to Google at the same time! Look, I find weird things fun, okay?

Anyway, I just cast my vote on a Diebold machine. No, really. It said so right there on the first screen, and on the machine's case, too.

This kind of cracks me up. I mean, back in 2004 when this was first an issue, I was all, "Thank God Washington doesn't use untrustworthy systems like that!" but it didn't matter because I was voting absentee anyway. Absentee voting is probably the most satisfying type of voting there is; there's the guy's NAME, right there in black and white, and the little bubble right next to it, filled in with you very own pen. You KNOW that's a clear and unambiguous and easily re-counted ballot (as long as you remember to put enough postage on it. Ah, that was a fun scandal...).

Then I moved to California in 2007, and I remember actually specifically doing my research to see if the area used black-box electronic voting systems. And they didn't, and I dropped my actual physical piece of paper in an actual physical box with an actual physical padlock on the side, which was ALSO very psychologically satisfying. Then I moved here. And I didn't look it up, because I thought we as a nation were PAST that now. I mean, who still uses black-box voting? Haven't we learned that lesson?

And I just cast a vote on a Diebold system.

So basically, who knows who the fuck I voted for?

I find conspiracy theorists unattractive, but I do admit I was just paranoid enough to avoid voting a completely straight ticket. It's not like it mattered, anyway; the only remotely competitive race on that ballot was Senate, and poor Rick Noreiga probably doesn't have a chance.

It was weird, though, casting a ballot without a whole page of citizen initiatives. Seriously. No initiatives, no referenda, no propositions... I got to the end of the "who the fuck cares?" races (you go, uncontested Precinct Constable Paul Elkins!) and was like, "wait, where's the rest of it?" Seriously. I'm used to the most exciting races on the ballot ALWAYS being initiatives. Remember the monorail fights? The car-tab battles? The slot-machine-legalization thing? The anti-affirmative action thing? Remember Initiative 957? THOSE were the exciting bits. And they were all narrated through the lens of the Stranger editorial staff, which can make strip-club zoning sound like high epic and low comedy by turns (ah, that was a fun scandal...). Local politics kind of sucks without Dan Savage's commentary.

Seriously, when I finally manage to move back to the West Coast, "more entertaining local politics" is gonna be at the top of the list of reasons why.

I suspect I alienated the entire older generation of my family; I finally snapped and responded to one of my grandmother's email forwards. It was one about the "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance (because no political issue is too stale to avoid beating your family over the head with it). To the question of "Why are we letting such a small minority make so much trouble, and in some cases, win these fights?" I answered

Because our government doesn't rule based strictly on the majority; in fact, the framers of our Constitution were concerned by the tyranny of the majority and tried to establish freedom and equality for the minority. In the years since the drafting of the Constitution, we've pushed this concern for the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority further, in all kinds of different ways.

Because a modern country should define patriotism and citizenship in secular, not religious terms.

Because the words "under God" in the Pledge are a legacy of fear-mongering, xenophobia, and McCarthyism, a relic of the worst part of our civic history instead of a tradition of our best.

Because you are a Mormon, a religious group that is viewed as un-Christian-- or, at least, suspiciously likely to be somehow non-Christian-- by a large plurality of Americans, and I suspect you wish to be acknowledged as a patriotic American citizen and not in any way excluded from public life regardless of this fact, so you should extend the same respect to other people with religious views less mainstream than your own.

Because removing the words "under God" returns the pledge to its non-religiously-marked, historic form, and does not exclude you or any other theist from our public life the way leaving those words in excludes some.

Because even if the phrase "under God" seems innocuous, we have hundreds of years of history telling us that the establishment of religion in political life is a bad, bad thing, and we ought to hold to the principles of our constitution even in the face of knee-jerk reactions to the contrary.

Then I ran away from the computer thinking "What have I done?" only to come back a few hours later to see that one of my cousins thanked me for doing it, talking about how she hates those forwards and likes Grandpa less the more he talks about politics and always feels judged by Grandma and is acutely uncomfortable around them since they started sending these emails, but too frightened of hurting the relationship to say anything. Which... is sad. I'm sure they don't WANT us to feel like that, you know? They just don't realize. I hope maybe this will get them to tone down the family-wide political emails without hurting the relationship. I hope.

Anyway, enough politics. Time to hand out candy. Happy Halloween, and a good Samhain to all who celebrate.

Comments

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

i am holding my breath. i WANT Obama so bad. Please!!!! Please!!! I want my country back.

and I grew up with a very My Way or the Highway family, so I feel your pain.

Sigh.

Have a Snickers bar.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

I know! *hugs* He'll make it. I swear. He has to.

My family isn't so bad. I just... think my grandparents don't realize.

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Oh, go you for that response. Beautifully put.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

oh, thank you so much. I'm glad to get at least some outside perspective telling me it wasn't gratuitously horrible, because I really didn't mean to just snap like that.

At least she hasn't been sending Prop 8 emails. Then I REALLY would have snapped.

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Fabulous response! I agree completely. And actually, that reply would work for Prop 8 as well with very little editing.

(My Dad was sending out the obnoxious right-wing forwards until my sister snapped and gave him what for in a reply-to-all. He's stopped!)

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

>that reply would work for Prop 8 as well with very little editing.

(Yeah, but I don't really have the ability to be so polite on that subject these days)

Thank you so much. Glad your dad stopped...

[ariadne83]

Woot! Go you! Those kinds of conversations are scary and yet satisfying - I had a long, surprisingly civil discussion with my mother this week RE: gay rights. She believes, as per the bible, that gays are an abomination and can be cured, and she's basing her vote on the fact that the mother of the guy running for prime minister in our country is Jewish (which therefore makes him religious). I calmly asked her why she believes gays are an abomination, pointed out that gay-conversion programmes have proven to fail time and again (and that if being gay isn't a choice and can't be cured then God must have made them that way), and that surely the most important thing to a Christian god is compassion.
I then went on a side-rant about how the people running the 'conversion' groups in the States are evil, manipulative and brutal... and she agreed *G*

I didn't change her mind, really, but I felt better getting my position out there, because staying silent makes me feel like a hypocrite.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

because staying silent makes me feel like a hypocrite.

Yes! Thank you. That was something my parents were never able to understand when I was leaving the church- as far as they were concerned, I should just go and SIT THROUGH IT, and refusing to do that was making trouble and defying them because "it doesn't hurt you to just sit there and listen."

When... it really kind of does.

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

two and a half hours. TWO AND A HALF HOURS. that's how long it took me to vote. Absentee. At home. there is something to be said for a lack of initiatives *g*

we had 22 city, 12 state, and then all of the offices to fill. *rolls eyes* But man, I could never go and do something like that at the polls. be there all damn day between the waiting in line and the voting itself.

good for you for standing up to your grandparents. It's the only way sometimes, to keep your sanity.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

Hah. Yeah, you Californians are even crazier than we Washingtonians. I know everybody back in Seattle used to carry their little cheat sheet into the polls with them :) Only way to do it, if you can't vote absentee. (And go you, so much, for all your anti-Prop 8 volunteering. Really)

[jd-junkie.livejournal.com]

As a very, VERY interested bystander, I'm fascinated by this post. I was asking about the voting process in the US in an lj post yesterday, and I understand the anti-climactic comment, but hopefully you're doing your bit to make things more straightforward on the day.
And wild applause for your reply to your grandmother.
I'm praying (OK, read begging any higher authority) for the right result come Tuesday.
To misquote princess upthread, I want my world back. :-)

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

Hah. Yes. If I can have my country back, you can have your world back, and then we will hold hands and dance and sing Kumbaya, n'est-ce pas? I mean, I will keep wearing my Obama superhero shirt and you just keep praying and hopefully it'll happen.

*touches wood*