A Rant About the Voting Process

I voted the other day. I held my nose and did it. By mail. I’m on the permanent absentee system. Here’s why… the last time I voted in person, I was living down the street from a retirement community. On election day, most of the residents of said retirement community take time off from their regular hobby of spending the day at Kaiser and become election volunteers.

On that day, I was (as usual for me given I’m an early bird) the first one there one day when the polls open. I got ushered in and gave them my name. The elderly man behind the desk crossed off a name from his ledger… but it wasn’t mine. I pointed out that he made a mistake, repeated my name, and pointed to my name on my ID. He crossed off another name… once again, not mine. Once again I corrected him. When he crossed off a third wrong name without making any note at the two previous errors, I figured it was in the best interest of the electorate for me to keep my mouth shut. After all, now there were three different people, who, if they showed up to vote later in the day, would be denied the opportunity because this man would have determined that they had already cast a ballot. And I’m pretty sure that the records didn’t show that I had voted on that day either.

(I note… I wasted about five minutes afterwards trying to explain what happened to the head volunteer so the problem could be corrected, but was met with blank stares.)

I appreciate all the retirees who do the work. Most of them, its been my experience, do a good job as volunteers. But at this particular retirement community, it seems there was no attempt to weed out those with, um, diminished capacity.

Anyway, there has got to be a better way.