Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Lazy, Apathetic, or Oblivious?


I voted yesterday in our local primary for Congress and a few other things.
Being in good health, and knowing I’ve been living carefully, I opted not to use early voting or mail-in.

          A smooth process in our small town, this time it was even smoother. I only had one person (6 feet) in front of me, and for once I even remembered which precinct was mine. Over the span of years that we’ve lived here, voting has skipped around from one school to the next, and then was finally consolidated into one location, the high school. About the time I had our ultimate precinct locked into my memory banks, we moved.

          Masks were of course mandatory.  I gave my street and name, was issued a ballot for my political preference and my very own clean pen, and pointed in the direction of the plastic voting booth. I did my thing, walked down the empty aisle to feed it into the machine, popped my now-infected pen into the collection to be sanitized, and received my “I voted” sticker.

          The fact that I’m retired and can go in the middle of the day usually means a quiet venue. But the voting attendance numbers came out this morning, and likely add another reason for the quiet polls.

          With 10,927 registered voters in our town, only 4,062 voted.

          Shameful.

          I hope there are better numbers in November.

11 comments:

  1. I wonder how they sanitize the pens? Primaries are usually pretty weakly attended. I'm sure a lot more people will turn out for the big vote.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope November is better attended. I see that Markey won, great news. Was that your state? :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yup , surprised you’re familiar with Marley. . But most importantly, Ritchie Neal won another term. I’m all for new blood, but Ritchie is chair of the Ways and Means. If ever there was a time for sane experience, it’s now

      Delete
    2. Whoops. Markey print on my iPad is so small I miss the typos.

      Delete
  3. Voting is compulsory here. A few (my partner included) manage to avoid it, but we do get big turnouts. I hope (fervently) that your town's November figures are MUCH more impressive.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I hope they all come out for the big one.

    ReplyDelete
  5. the 6,865 people who didn't bother to vote better not start complaining when things don't work out they way they'd want.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Just make sure you sanitize your hands and then later wash and the pen issue should not be an issue. I am surprised you get to vote so early. I have requested a mail-in ballot...waiting for it. Then I will drive it directly to the drop box for ballots, not sure our mail is efficient enough.

    ReplyDelete
  7. we had our republican primary last week, and since Im a registered Republican but not a trump republican, I stayed home and he went off to vote for Mr. T.
    And of course I won't be voting in the Democratic primary, but I assure you we both are heading for the polls in November to cancel out each other's vote. We both are convinced that our way is the right way.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by and I'd love to hear what you think.