Civic duty

I got to my polling place—the fire station down the block—at 0645 yesterday, but it turns out that polls in California don’t open until 0700. Well, blow me—in Virginia they open at 0600. Californians are pikers.

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.