Voting Day

Bruce and I lost our right to vote at our local polling station due to redistricting and budget cuts (Please don't ask me to explain. I don't understand how it would cost less for the state to mail us our absentee ballots as opposed to our going in in person to vote). This evening Bruce and I discovered that we hadn't been sent the mail-in ballots that were promised us on our voting info mailers. We just assumed that they were in the great stack of unopened mail that piles up on the cabinet in the hall. They weren't. I was worried that our all-important vote was lost, but Bruce called the County Clerk's office for advice and the lady told us to go in to our local polling station and fill out provisional ballots. This we did.

A very nice precinct worker named Marilyn helped us -- she had to figure out what to do as we went along. Because she'd run out of provisional ballot, she had to hand-write all our info on the envelopes while we bubbled in our ballots. She was endlessly patient, even while I asked (more than once) if our rinky-dink ballots in their scribbled on envelopes would really be counted (I had cynical visions of them being dumped in the garbage on everyone's way out that evening; sort of what I occasionally do with my students' papers when I don't know what to do with them). She assured us that they would indeed be counted. And I believed her. She was so kind, funny and cheerful -- thank you Marilyn!