Joe The Voter

This morning we voted.

I have a theory as to why people are voting early in record numbers.
They all have a sense that after they cast their ballot IT WILL ALL
BE OVER! It will FINALLY BE OVER!!! They won't have to endure
any more television advertisements and dinner-time tape-recorded
phone calls and they won't have to pull glossy candidate mailers out
of their mailboxes every single day.

Of course it's just a theory, but it illustrates how I felt this morning
after we went to the Bureau of Elections and did our civic duty.

When we arrived there was a good sized crowd of "early" voters
and it was a little scary and definitely depressing because, honestly,
a good percentage of them looked unqualified for the task. Twenty-five
per cent were, clinically, the walking dead. The majority of the rest
looked dazed and/or totally confused...which is pretty normal looking
for around here, actually.

We had to wait a little while before receiving our ballots and I ended
up next to a very elderly man who kept asking "How'd I get this pen
in my hand?" about fifty times and his adult grandson kept telling him,
"You filled out that form, remember?" I just sat there, but I wanted
to shout "Are you kidding? This guy doesn't even know what century
we're in! He's living on the planet LaLa! Hello!"

Seriously, he didn't even know where he was so how on earth was he
going to figure out what the heck the ballot was all about, let alone color
in the correct circles. Potentially, it was a case of voter fraud, if you
ask me, because someone was obviously going to have to fill in the
little circles for him.

They have a litmus test for political candidates. I think it's only fair
that the voters should be required to pass one as well.