Voting In 2010

I got home today and my mother was still cooking dinner so I figured I’de walk two blocks and go vote since I hate anyone in office longer than 4 years. As I am walking over I remember that they changed the ballots this year but I don’t read any local news or anything so I have no clue what I am in store for. Usually I just wait for Grandma to tell me when to go in the booth and I diddle-daddle flipping switches and pull the lever to escape from my curtained enclosure.

I used to pray for a new system. The lines at any time are long as hell because apparently you need to be over 80 years old to be on an election committee. They take forever to find my name in the book because either their hearing aide battery is dying by the end of the night or they are just straight up losing it because my name is easy as hell to pronounce and spell. I always wondered why can’t I just walk up and click the mouse on a screen a few times and poof done, results posted to a server somewhere and we know who was elected about 4 minutes after the polls close. So I’m thinking my dream came true and we modernized.

But nnnnnnooooooooo. I get there and its the usual hoopla but then I get handed this:

IT’S A FUCKING SCANTRON

I mean come on. I know I’m voting in a middle school but do I need to stoop back to shitty scantrons. Is this a fucking test? If so where is my grade so I can put it on the fridge. I mean seriously its 20 fucking 10 and we now have upgraded from a machine that looked like a typewriter only mounted sideways to a fucking scantron. Way to keep it in the 90’s man.

I was just in a furniture store yesterday and they had a nice new touch screen computer for customers to look at catalogs and here we are doing IMPORTANT election voting and it’s on fucking scantron. I don’t think you understand how fucking annoyed I am at this.

Now not only do I have to wait for them to find Hannigan in a book with only 2 Hannigan’s in it, now I have to wait for people to color in fucking circles perfectly so the big ass scantron reader will read it.

Step back and think. Who does most of the voting because they bitch about everything and never forgets to go vote? The elderly. What happens when you’re old? You can’t see as well and you also surely can’t stop shaking. So tell me how a fucking scantron that you can’t go out of the lines on is going to work for someone like Michael J. Fox with Parkinson’s or some old person that shakes as if there is an earthquake in their boots. I mean didn’t the stupid hole punch thing fuck up the Bush election in 2000? Now we’ve upgraded to fucking up coloring in circles too. Family Guy says it best.

Anyway back to my experience. I’m looking everywhere for a pen to finish coloring this bitch in and I can’t find any. I hear someone say that you can’t use pen and that you have to use the special pen at one of the three little desks that basically has cardboard on all three sides. So I wait, and wait, and wait and finally someone finishes. Apparently it takes 10 minutes to color in circles. [Side note to everyone: If you don’t know who to vote for before going to the election then don’t even bother fucking going, you just screw shit up. And secondly, if you cannot figure out who to vote for while standing in line, don’t fucking go to the coloring booth and take 10 minutes to fill out the form. Get your shit together before you get up there.] I go up to the little booth/desk and grab the special pen. Lo and behold it’s just a fucking ultra fine point sharpie. WTF I could have been done 15 minutes ago. Special pen my ass.

I finish faster than anyone else there and go over to the scantron machine. I make a cute joke asking how to use the big shredder device and insert my scantron to be graded. It comes back and says ballot successfully casted so apparently I fucking passed kindergarten again since I now can color in the lines.

After all this, all I can say is, yes, rent is 2 damn high.