I voted! Yay! (Who needs a stinkin' curtain?)
I don't remember the last time I voted at a polling place/booth. I was probably in my 20s. For years I'd do the "absentee ballot" gig, mostly because it was so much more convenient (and do-able) when I was a single mom with a young boy and didn't want to put him through standing in line and dealing with him in the curtained booth with me (after picking him up from daycare after a l-o-n-g dark November day at work). That's a bit much to expect from a little kid. And I've always been so disgusted with the archaic voting machines in this state. They were still circa 1940s ca-chunking lever-jobs up until 2004. (JDub just informed me that around that time they were upgraded, sorta — he still prefers voting at a polling place). In the last ten years or so, "absentee ballots" have now become "mail-in ballots" and they are extremely popular, if not even required in some areas. I actually look forward to a time that we can vote online. Even at this juncture it can't be any more "risky" than it is otherwise, what with all the shenanigans that tend to take place even at polling centers throughout the country. (Provisional ballots? WTF?) I still shudder about 2000. What a nightmare that was. Just think how different our country would be right now? I felt like the U.S. that year was a third-world country that had just experienced a coup. Right under our noses.
And how much do you want a bet that even if Obama were to win by a landslide, he would never utter these words: "I have a mandate..." (W said that after barely squeaking by in 2004 — like a threat. It wouldn't surprise me if he said it in 2000! What an arrogant a$$. And do you know it's been 2,000 days since he said "Mission Accomplished"?)
Palin said today, to answer a question posed by a grade-schooler about what the vice-president does, that she would "run the senate." Like Rachael Maddow said, "Under whose constitution?" And then Maddow said (which just about knocked me to the floor in laughter), "Who would have ever thought that spelling "potato" with an "e" at the end would make someone actually seem qualified to be vice-president?"
