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You might as well vote

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florida voting lines

Ah, look at all the lonely people.

Election Day at last and people here started lining up before 7 a.m. Wait times will be between one and four hours. Maybe more. You’d think they were selling vaguely updated iPads in there, instead of a simple choice between two fairly uninspiring candidates.

On the one hand, it’s kind of gratifying to see people enduring major inconvenience for the right to vote. On the other, you wonder if there isn’t a better way. In a place like Florida, where a few hundred voters could conceivably tip the entire election, the last thing you want is a few thousand of them claiming they couldn’t make it to the ballot box.

I’d say everybody should just vote by mail, like I did. But then you’re at the mercy of the U.S. Postal Service — which functions with all the smooth precision of a 20-year-old Plymouth minivan. Out of two votes cast by mail from Boca del Dave, only one made it to the election office. I wouldn’t know that, but my wife pays attention to such things and saw online that her vote had not been recorded. So she had to make arrangements to vote in person. It caused me to wonder: How many other ballots find their way between the seat cushions of USPS vans?

Oh well. It’s up to the voters now. Or, barring that, a bunch of stinking lawyers and four or five harrumphing judges. Either way, we should have a decision by January. If my guy wins, I’m not going to gloat. If your guy wins, I’m not going to move to Canada. Let’s remember that any president is only as good as that herd of cats called Congress. For all the grandiose vows at the top of the ticket, the suits on Capitol Hill are pretty good at ensuring that nothing grandiose happens. (You do worry about vacancies on the Supreme Court, but that’s a fear for another day.)

Haven’t voted yet? You probably should, lines be damned. It’ll give you more cred when it’s time to complain.

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Comments

  1. We’re going in a little while. We live in a tiny town, so the line shouldn’t be bad. When we were still working, we always voted early.
    I just hope for a clear decision before it gets down to Florida or Ohio. I fear a scenario where the votes are switched overnight in those squirrelly machines in Ohio if the decision is left in limbo overnight!

    • Worst election night in my memory was the Bush/Gore fiasco of 2000. It didn’t help that I was working at a newspaper then. Let’s just think good thoughts.

  2. What about drive-thru voting? We could do it at banks and combine a stop at the ATM with a quick ballot punch. Banks are our most trustworthy institutions, so what could go wrong?

    I don’t understand the “Eleanor Rigby” reference in the caption, but it made me chuckle when I recognized the line.