Democracy is tiring

..was what I thought as I dragged my ass out of bed half an hour early to go vote.

Something new - they actually placed little blue traffic cones on the sidewalk to define "No Electioneering" zones. (In Chicago, you can't campaign within 50 feet of a polling place) Glad to see it, as I was all kinds of abuse of this law when I worked at the seniors building - party reps would go up and bang on old ladies' doors, practically drag these folks down to the polling place and hand them sample ballots in the actual ballot booth. Irritated the hell out of me, but after I filed a complaint the first year my employer told me not to "make waves". That's when I started taking the day off out of sheer disgust.

Since I was one of the first voters in my polling place, I elected to try out the new touch-screen voting machines. Figured they needed to learn how to use the things sometime, might as well be now. The judge entered my info into their machine, then after a few tries and some whispered muttering back and forth finally figured out how to encode a plactic card with my info. I then took the card and put it into the actual voting machine. It comes up with your name and info and asks you to confirm it. You go thru all the candidates and referendii (7 pages worth this time) and when you select an option it marks it clearly on the screen with a large green X. At the end, your entire ballot appears on the screen for you to look over - it's kind of easy to lose your place on it, but generally it works. You then select a "print ballot for review", which prints your selections on a paper tape kind of like a cash register receipt tape, but this is in an enclosed thingie on the side of the machine. You look it over again, and if it all looks right, you tap the big yellow "Cast Ballot" entry and all is done. Your paper tape feeds up into the top roll so the next person can't see how you voted - kind of a waste of paper but a fairly common-sense solution. You take your card out and hand it back to the judge, who issues you your voting receipt. I usually pin this to my coat to fend off the folks pluggin various candidates at the El station.

So, it took a little longer than I'd hoped, what with the "figuring out how to work the new machine" thing they had going on, but it wasn't too bad.

quote from a wise man

3stitches, who has friended me for no apparent reason, but we know a couple of the same people in MN

On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify.

At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"

Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

The room erupted into applause.

Badly targeted mailing list

I got something today from the Scoety of the Divine Word.
I think they wanted to sell me a rosary with a picture of either some saint or Pope JP2.
I'm not really sure, because it's written IN POLISH!

(Let's see - I know who we should send this to - a Pagan who doesn't speak Polish.)

Seriously, man. They are based in a nearby suburb - Did they just go through the Chicago phone book and pick out Polish-sounding names?