Eyes on Us

A nation turns its lonely eyes to us. Or maybe not lonely, but worried?

I was #52 at my polling place when I voted this morning at 7:30 am. That means my little place in my little city had more than one person a minute voting.

I had a choice of a touchscreen or paper ballot, and chose paper. I can't bring myself to trust the touchscreen machines after the stuff in the news a few years ago, even though I only vaguely remember some problems about security.

I was not alone, though, because when I put my ballot into the paper ballot counting machine, it told me I was number 35 to do so. So, assuming I wasn't too wildly out of order (either fast or slow with a pen), the majority of voters before me chose paper ballots.

There was a big pink sign taped to the place where you gave your name saying that you weren't required to have any ID to vote. It's not, probably, a huge issue in my mostly white, mostly middle class voting area, but there's a movement in some areas to make everyone use a state ID to vote. The idea, so I've read, is that some folks won't have IDs, and that other folks think those some folks vote for the wrong people anyway, so that the other folks think the some folks might as well not be allowed to vote. I was amused by the bright pink paper assuring me that I didn't need to show ID. And I didn't (nor was I asked to).

And now we wait.

Meanwhile, I have a project that I'm doing at the last minute. Apparently, I haven't learned the lesson we all wish our first year students would have learned in junior high.