Usually when I vote, I get a warm and happy feeling. I've done my civic duty, lent my voice to the public discourse, and helped decide issues of import.
Not this year.
I left the early polling place feeling slightly depressed and not at all confident my vote will be counted. Memories of 2000 danced in my head, and the fact that 58,000 absentee ballots mailed out in Broward County have mysteriously disappeared doesn't make me feel any better.
Besides, I think I goofed up, and it's too late for me to undo the goof.
Call me paranoid, but I don't trust electronic voting without a printed receipt. I wouldn't think of depositing a check at the ATM or even using my credit card to pump gas without getting a piece of paper to prove what I did. I've battled my way through way too many bank statement and billing errors to ever trust anything important to those electronic impulses. So why should I entrust my cherished vote to a little screen that may or may not record what I intended?
I've worked on word processors for more than 20 years, and I know from sad experience they don't always work, despite a phalanx of computer doctors hovering over them.
It hasn't happened often, but it's happened often enough to make me nervous: I carefully type some deathless prose into my computer, only to watch it die.
It's probably something I've done, but, whatever, the story is gone, and I'm left with a blank screen and a blinking cursor, even as I myself curse.
And I won't even go into the possibility of inadvertent (or advertent? See how suspicious I am?) cross-wiring or mis-programming.
So on Wednesday, I went to the Pasco County Courthouse, stood in line for 30 minutes, and requested a written ballot. And though I love the U.S. Postal Service, I didn't want to mail it back - remember those 58,000 missing ballots that were supposedly put in the mail?
The elections clerk was obliging, but another elections clerk came over and said that after I went outside to mark my paper ballot, I would have to stand in line again (by this time, the line was down the hall and out the door) to hand it in.
"Why can't I just hand it over the counter to one of you?" I asked.
"You just can't."
"Why can't I just give it to someone in line to give to you?" I persisted.
"Because we have to verify your signature on the spot," he answered sternly.
The room suddenly seemed very quiet. I smiled at the people in line, feeling slightly guilty for not getting in and getting out.
"But what if I mailed it in? How would you verify my signature on the spot then?"
Pause.
"Well, if you know someone in the line, you can give it to them to turn in," he said.
I looked at the line again. I didn't see anybody I know.
"Why can't I just give it to the first person in line and let them turn it in?" I wondered. "I'll watch to make sure they do."
"I guess you could," he mumbled, visibly annoyed by my questions.
The original clerk said that if my signature didn't match the signature on the back of the envelope, they would call me.
I was so discombobulated by the whole encounter that I forgot to insert my completed ballot into the "secrecy envelope" before I put it in the outer envelope and signed the back. What if that disqualified my ballot?
I gingerly lifted the moist envelope flap, put the ballot into the inner envelope, and tried to seal it back. No luck. The flap popped back up.
In desperation, I borrowed some cellophane tape from a nearby clerk and taped over my signature. Egad, if that didn't look like a tampered ballot, I don't know what would. Was all my effort in vain?
I was later told I could have stood in line and gotten another written ballot, but by then it was too late.
Anyway, that ballot with the tape over my signature is genuine, so whoever the counter is, please count it.
Meanwhile, as everybody else goes to vote on Tuesday, I think I'll go see Team America: World Police. I could use some laughs.
