I voted!

With the fanfare of this election, its hard to admit that voting has never really been that important to me. I try to blame it on my neutral upbringing, (Jehovahs Witnesses never get involved in politics), but I think thats just an excuse. So this election, despite the dreary rain, my desire to sleep in, and lines that wrapped around buildings, I made sure that I got out and voted. My precinct casts its ballots at a local church, which I always think is little odd since I thought church and state werent the best bedfellows so to speak. Anyway, when I pulled up to the church and saw the 6 foot fence with barb wire around it and bars on the window I realized that I was glad I chose to vote in the morning instead of the evening because if I had showed up after dark I dont think I would have gotten out of my car. But it looked safe enough during the day so I stood in line for a bit over an hour to cast my vote. It was a fairly ordinary experience except for the nagging doubt afterwards that I filled out the form improperly and my vote may not have counted, for that fact I feared that we all had filled out the ballot incorrectly and no one in that precinct would be counted! You see, the city of Portsmouth is the only city in the Hampton Roads area that was using a paper ballot that you had to fill out with a pencil. Everyone else has an electronic system. When I was waiting in line, I had noticed that every 5 or ten feet there were signs posted everywhere that showed you how to fill out the ballot properly. On every sign it said "Use a number two pencil", just like a high school Scantron test. When I got up to the voting booth with my paper ballot that said at the top "USE A #2 PENCIL",I was expecting to see cups of pencils available to everyone, but the only thing available to the voters were markers. I looked around and everyone was using markers so I am sure it was ok, right? I seemed to be the only one questioning it, so I am going to assume that markers could work. Who knows, Portsmouth is such a sad little city stuck in the dark ages.

(THis photo was about 45 minutes into the wait, I thought when I got to the doors I could vote, but I was quite disappointed when I got the door and saw even more line.)