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It's Primary Day in New York State today. It should've been last Tuesday, but apparently it's considered politically incorrect to honor the memories of the fallen heroes of 9/11 by actually doing something civic that day, so it got pushed back a week.
This might have been the biggest anticlimax since the Chastity Belt Party won a working majority in 1928.
The fun began when they announced, less than a week ago, that they were moving our polling place. No biggie; it was from a church to the elementary school next door. Yet nothing was out there to direct you to where in the school the voting actually was. Hint: go as far from the church as you can possibly get, to ensure you won't see it.
Next, I had to pick 2:15 for my civic duty-do. Nothing like 35 red-light-flashing buses full of crumbcrunchers to slow you down. Yet this delay was nothing compared to what you got inside.
Election inspectors are appointed by the county Board of Elections, a patronage pit run (not by accident, but by state law) by direct appointees of the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic parties. The criteria for being hired as a pollworker seem to be the following: (a) have attained at least the age of 85 years; (b) have the acute hearing of a damp sponge; and (c) act like your exercise of the franchise is a serious imposition upon them.
My inspector today met all these requirements, but with the additional benefit of being illiterate or dyslectic. You "sign in" for each vote by signing your name next to an imaged copy of your signature, in a book organized under that new-fangled system named "alphabetical order." Since only voters registered in parties can vote in primaries, today's sign-in book was much smaller than the general election edition- perhaps the thickness of a mid-sized magazine.
Leave it to me to get the ancient, deaf, cranky dyslectic who insisted on reading every page of it.
My last name begins with S. In a Christian Bible, that would place our page somewhere among the Epistles of Paul, yet there she was, turning over the entire Old Fucking Testament looking for it. The B's, the D's, I held out hope for speed when I saw her get to the M's- and then she turned back! Same thing with the S section itself; it took her longer to find me in that book than it took me from car to head of the line, including the We're Not Knowing Where We're Going (or which way the river's flowing) part.
While she was doing that, a slightly less Methusiliac next to her was signing in a Republican. But I got to go first, because we flaming liberals are like that. (Also, we got there about an hour before he did.) With a sigh of relief, I closed the curtain on the machine that was perhaps more ancient than even the pollworkers. (Yes, we're required by federal law to have electronic voting by now, but the incumbents haven't decided which ones they can rig yet, so we just ignore that law.) I reached for my first lever, and,.... nothing.
Instantly I knew what had happened, and a test of my hypothesis quickly proved it: the Republican levers worked just fine. They'd activated the levers for the wrong party. I was committing third degree election fraud, and not loving it in the least.
Somehow, the Golden Girls decided that the correct approach was to let the white-haired Republican vote on my turn. My inspector hemmed, hawed, dropped her entire batch of "tickets" (which I'm convinced somehow allow the inspectors to report to Karl Rove on who I voted for), and gave Whitehair at least twice the allotted voting time.
At last I got my turn. I made my selections for county court judge, county executive, and,.... and,.....?
And nobody.
All those signs in the neighborhood for Town offices, not a one of them mentioning party affiliation? Not for me. All of that for the shortest ballot I've ever voted in my life, and I'm counting the 9th grade G.O. election that my candidate lost by 17 votes.
Now watch. A little over six hours from now, all the endorsed candidates, with the power of the unions and the civil service workers behind them, will amazingly be reported to be the winners, so we can do it all over again with the same results on a cold day in Hell roughly six weeks from now.
America. Land that I love.
This might have been the biggest anticlimax since the Chastity Belt Party won a working majority in 1928.
The fun began when they announced, less than a week ago, that they were moving our polling place. No biggie; it was from a church to the elementary school next door. Yet nothing was out there to direct you to where in the school the voting actually was. Hint: go as far from the church as you can possibly get, to ensure you won't see it.
Next, I had to pick 2:15 for my civic duty-do. Nothing like 35 red-light-flashing buses full of crumbcrunchers to slow you down. Yet this delay was nothing compared to what you got inside.
Election inspectors are appointed by the county Board of Elections, a patronage pit run (not by accident, but by state law) by direct appointees of the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic parties. The criteria for being hired as a pollworker seem to be the following: (a) have attained at least the age of 85 years; (b) have the acute hearing of a damp sponge; and (c) act like your exercise of the franchise is a serious imposition upon them.
My inspector today met all these requirements, but with the additional benefit of being illiterate or dyslectic. You "sign in" for each vote by signing your name next to an imaged copy of your signature, in a book organized under that new-fangled system named "alphabetical order." Since only voters registered in parties can vote in primaries, today's sign-in book was much smaller than the general election edition- perhaps the thickness of a mid-sized magazine.
Leave it to me to get the ancient, deaf, cranky dyslectic who insisted on reading every page of it.
My last name begins with S. In a Christian Bible, that would place our page somewhere among the Epistles of Paul, yet there she was, turning over the entire Old Fucking Testament looking for it. The B's, the D's, I held out hope for speed when I saw her get to the M's- and then she turned back! Same thing with the S section itself; it took her longer to find me in that book than it took me from car to head of the line, including the We're Not Knowing Where We're Going (or which way the river's flowing) part.
While she was doing that, a slightly less Methusiliac next to her was signing in a Republican. But I got to go first, because we flaming liberals are like that. (Also, we got there about an hour before he did.) With a sigh of relief, I closed the curtain on the machine that was perhaps more ancient than even the pollworkers. (Yes, we're required by federal law to have electronic voting by now, but the incumbents haven't decided which ones they can rig yet, so we just ignore that law.) I reached for my first lever, and,.... nothing.
Instantly I knew what had happened, and a test of my hypothesis quickly proved it: the Republican levers worked just fine. They'd activated the levers for the wrong party. I was committing third degree election fraud, and not loving it in the least.
Somehow, the Golden Girls decided that the correct approach was to let the white-haired Republican vote on my turn. My inspector hemmed, hawed, dropped her entire batch of "tickets" (which I'm convinced somehow allow the inspectors to report to Karl Rove on who I voted for), and gave Whitehair at least twice the allotted voting time.
At last I got my turn. I made my selections for county court judge, county executive, and,.... and,.....?
And nobody.
All those signs in the neighborhood for Town offices, not a one of them mentioning party affiliation? Not for me. All of that for the shortest ballot I've ever voted in my life, and I'm counting the 9th grade G.O. election that my candidate lost by 17 votes.
Now watch. A little over six hours from now, all the endorsed candidates, with the power of the unions and the civil service workers behind them, will amazingly be reported to be the winners, so we can do it all over again with the same results on a cold day in Hell roughly six weeks from now.
America. Land that I love.