The Mystery of the Gerrymandering Carpetbagger
The dust has finally settled after Tuesday's elections, and the Dems have a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994. It was pretty satisfying to open today's NY Times and see a photograph of Nancy Pelosi sitting in the Oval Office with Bush and Cheney, who look like they'd rather be getting teeth pulled than have their picture taken with a San Franciscan.
While I'm on the topic of politics, I would like to address the overwhelming push to get people into the voting booths. When I first voted, at the tender young age of 18, I'd read the occasional friendly reminder in the local paper to vote on the first Tuesday in November. After 9/11, politics became more important than they ever had in our lifetime, and people started to severely guilt trip each other if you didn't vote. Since the 2004 presidential election, the pressure to vote has reached a fever pitch -- it has come down to getting death threats from Paris Hilton.
Well, Paris's intimidation tactics were successful, because I made it out to vote on Tuesday. My polling place is just around the corner at P.S. 158 on York Avenue. I walked in at around 6 pm, and surprise of all surprises, there was no line. The funny thing is that after all this recent talk about electronic voting machines, my polling place still uses the old-fashioned voting machine with the little switches and the giant red lever. It looked like a leftover from the days of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. The voting machine actually looked exactly like this drawing, which is dated 1936:
Embarrassingly, it took me about five minutes to figure out how to use the damn thing. After reading the instructions over and over, I finally got the gist of it and started to get my vote on. When I got down to State Comptroller on my ballot, a woman pulled the curtain back on my booth, thinking that it was empty. When she saw that I was in there, she let out a piercing shriek, like she caught me masturbating or something. She quickly flung the curtain shut and let me finish voting in private.
Hooray for democracy!
While I'm on the topic of politics, I would like to address the overwhelming push to get people into the voting booths. When I first voted, at the tender young age of 18, I'd read the occasional friendly reminder in the local paper to vote on the first Tuesday in November. After 9/11, politics became more important than they ever had in our lifetime, and people started to severely guilt trip each other if you didn't vote. Since the 2004 presidential election, the pressure to vote has reached a fever pitch -- it has come down to getting death threats from Paris Hilton.
Well, Paris's intimidation tactics were successful, because I made it out to vote on Tuesday. My polling place is just around the corner at P.S. 158 on York Avenue. I walked in at around 6 pm, and surprise of all surprises, there was no line. The funny thing is that after all this recent talk about electronic voting machines, my polling place still uses the old-fashioned voting machine with the little switches and the giant red lever. It looked like a leftover from the days of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. The voting machine actually looked exactly like this drawing, which is dated 1936:
Embarrassingly, it took me about five minutes to figure out how to use the damn thing. After reading the instructions over and over, I finally got the gist of it and started to get my vote on. When I got down to State Comptroller on my ballot, a woman pulled the curtain back on my booth, thinking that it was empty. When she saw that I was in there, she let out a piercing shriek, like she caught me masturbating or something. She quickly flung the curtain shut and let me finish voting in private.
Hooray for democracy!
posted by Alexander at 12:15 PM
2 Comments:
I actually did walk in on someone masturbating in a voting booth. I think they voted for Clinton.
I dug your post. It was up my alley on a couple of levels. First off, I never really liked that "Vote or Die" garbage. I always viewed it as an unsubtle threat.
I also noted how the lady was surprised that someone was in the voting booth. I don't know why she'd act astonished. "Hey lady, other people are allowed to be in here too. This isn't your private polling location."
Folks do that with elevators too. They try to embark as soon as the doors open, then act surprised when other people are actually trying to get off.
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