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By the time that most of you read this and in spite of my diminished physical condition (yeah I know, mental too...), I expect to have been able to make it a couple of blocks down the road to my local poling place in order to perform my civic duty and vote in the Toledo primary.
I will not bore you with the choices that I intend to make, as I am a great believer in the sanctity of the secret ballot. Besides, I normally close my eyes in the voting booth to prevent revealing such choices even to myself. (This is more commonly known as the "pin the tail on the jackasses" voting method.)
Those of you recalling my shady upbringing in Chicago may likewise be surprised to discover that in spite of what might be considered a questionable electoral heritage, I nevertheless pledge to restrict myself to doing so only once. Likewise I vow to restrain myself from the almost overwhelming desire to vote for a Toledo resident now deceased. (I guess you just can't go home again.)
I urge each of you here in Toledo to likewise perform such duty in a renewed spirit of hope and change. (Excuse me, that last one is making me feel rather ill.)
4 comments:
For reasons of convenience, for the last few elections, I have been voting using a absentee ballot. The form is easy to obtain (downloaded) and I do not have to wait in lines, risk being late for work (30 minute drive).
There are too many people who use any excuse not to vote. The reasons are many, weak, and the country/state/city may be better off having these folks not exercising their franchise.
Roman,
Under normal circumstances I would tend to agree with you. When I see the results of yesterday's primary however, it is a number of those who did exercise their franchise that I worry about.
I am literally ashamed of some of the candidate choices that were made yesterday.
Tim,
I too did my civic duty by voting early on Miami St.
I got an email a few days before about the BOE needing workers and called volunteering to work, so I was too late to vote absentee.
Working the polls was "interesting" to say the least..., many sitting around doing nothing while "the few" set up and tore down the voting operation...
The day was long, but our precinct stayed busy (we were the largest precinct), but only managed to get a tad past 11%. The other three precincts were lucky if they got half of that...
For my first time, I was glad that I didn't work my home precinct because the map in today's Blah/Bland had it as having a 29% turnout.
Despite the experience, I'm going to try it again in Nov. before deciding whether or not being a poll worker is something that I'm going to want to do every election.
(you know, between the training and the artificially low predicted setup times and the long day, I'm wondering how the BOE gets away with paying much less that minimum wage, or why I and the other poll workers do the job for that pittance. . .)
Dave,
My only thoughts on the subject of poll workers is to thank them a thankless job. They were a great help to me.
As for the level of pay, I hear that Young Ben is looking at a proposal to Unionize poll workers and pay them a "living wage"(just kidding).
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