Anyhow, there was one person there ahead of me, a
South Asian in motorcycle gear who said he’s a software developer and he
doesn’t own a mobile phone. I almost high-fived him. (I have one, but I’ve
always told employers I don’t. If they think you have one, they’ll only want to
call you and annoy you.) He was carrying his gloves and helmet, and his
sample ballot.
We talked about how more than half
the ballots cast in this state for this election are expected to be by mail,
but he said he likes the experience of voting in person. He’s right—it feels
more civic to be handed your ballot by a really old guy with extremely limited
English skills (but who I expect is a holy terror in Mandarin), and go mark it
in a little plastic boothlet.
The ballot itself (which was actually two sheets,
because of all the initiatives and referenda) was in English and Spanish,
although the cover sheet was in the other three languages that election
materials come in, so I’m assuming that if you’d wanted one in Mandarin,
Tagalog or Viet, it would have been produced.
By the time the place opened up, there were maybe
five people behind me, and a bunch more arrived before I left—at least 12 or
15, standing there with coffee mugs, babies and briefcases. I was outa there
by 0712—all those ballot measures.
That’s one thing I love about California—every election
has at least five grass-roots laws or proposed measures referred by the
legislature to the electorate for approval. There’s almost always something
about marijuana or prisons. This time there was no grass in the grass-roots,
but there was the one on the death penalty and one on amending the
three-strikes policy, so we had the penal system represented.
Also, there were two competing measures to raise
taxes state-wide to pay for services/education that have been gutted by the
economic crunch; one sent down from Governor Brown, the other framed and funded by a woman who was, for about 17 minutes, a childhood friend of mine.
When I left the fire station, I slapped that “I
Voted” sticker on my shirt and wore it all day. It’s a good day’s work to
vote.
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