About Me

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Portland, OR, United States
I am living in the age of quarantine and a brand-new LPN.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Did you vote?

Paul says he needs a sticker now, that says "My Wife Made Me Vote." :-) Sheesh, you wouldn't think it'd be so difficult to get that man to vote!

Even though I have misgivings about making a portion of the population foot the bill for children's health care, I went ahead and voted "yes" for the cigarette tax and Oregon Measure 50. I hate to again tax smokers, and yet just looking at how hard the cigarette industry is fighting this one makes me wish I had a million votes to vote for it. And I voted yes and yes on the other two obvious (in my opinion) ones. Did you vote yet? Election day is tomorrow!

And one thing I don't like about all-mail voting in Oregon is that we don't get a sticker that says "I Voted."

5 comments:

Mimi said...

That bugs me too. I want the sticker. I also want to go and vote, I dislike the mail-in thing. Sigh.

I am dragged kicking and screaming to change, you know?

Molly Newman said...

I feel the same way about mail-in voting. The ritual of going to the Designated Polling Place, the panoply of bunting and American flags, the altar attendants in the form of sweet white-haired old ladies, the solemn retreat behind the curtain of the voting booth, the administering of the sticker to the communicants... it's as close as our secular society comes to civic ritual, and I already miss it.

Of course, I couldn't even vote this time around, because somehow I haven't managed to drag my lazy butt into the DMV to get my Oregon driver's license/voter registration goodies. Well, I did once, but after waiting for almost an hour I got a call that Fisher had fallen off the slide at day camp and broken his arm, so I had to leave and just never made it back.

Jim did vote, though, and I walked his ballot down to the library for him by way of making voting more of a communal thing.

(Sorry for the long long comment... I guess I should have just posted it at my blog instead!)

Elizabeth said...

I can't decide if I like the mail-only or not, Mimi. So it's that way in WA, too?

Molly, that is a very interesting observation. A ritual because we human beings need ritual.

I chatted with some folks at Cusina tonight about who they will vote for in the presidential election. One big man named Dave said he will vote for Hillary. :-) I am undecided as to who I will vote for in the primary--one has not emerged in my mind as the clear choice. But I think probably Hillary will win the primary and then I will vote for her.

Elizabeth said...

Oh, Molly--do you know which DMV you should go to? The one downtown on 6th. Less waiting there. I don't know how the North Portland one is but if that's the one you waited an hour at.....yeah, I went to many of the area's lovely DMVs in our first month here, because in addition to driver's license and car registration, I then decided to total my car after only a month. Then I had more DMV sitting to do. :-P

Mimi said...

Molly, that is an awesome way to put it, it is indeed a ritual.

Technically the entire state is not vote by mail, it's county by county, but I think there are only one or two that still have polling places.

It's kind of a sore subject with me ;)

I'm not loving anyone right now, but the more I hear about Obama the more I like him.

SC