It used to be a point of pride for me to vote on Election Day. I wasn’t buying into this early voting shenanigans and honestly, I just thought it was more fun to be there in the spirit of voting with a small or large crowd. You know, whatever.
I worked for the city for a few years and where I worked was an early voting station so, you know, it was just too easy and I would just use my city ID to vote.
This is the first year in many that I’ve both waited until Election Day and didn’t have a city ID. I left my house and I kept like… feeling weird like I’d forgotten something. “Do I have on my dark blue v-neck voting t-shirt? Check. My driver’s license? Check. Then what? Oh right. I don’t need that.”
The first time I voted for Obama I did so with my husband on Election Day. He said we were going to the empty supermarket. I thought, “Okay, I guess that makes sense. More room for the machines if the supermarket is empty.”
We pull up to the Asian market and it is very much an active supermarket. “This isn’t an empty supermarket.”
“No. It’s the MT Supermarket.”
Right.
The second time I voted, I was 19 (okay, look, for whatever reason as a kid I was really into politics. I would tell my mom how to vote and then when I was 18 I was like OMG I AM SO VOTING NOW! and I waited for a couple of hours in line at a library with my boyfriend who was also into politics because that’s how I roll) I went to a Christian Scientist church to vote. There was no one there but Christians with test tubes.
Okay, so that’s not how Christian Scientist churches work, but it was very no fuss, no muss. I think mostly because I grew up in a suburb of Houston and most people thought Christian Scientists really did have test tubes where they were trying to make Jesus out of leftover genetic material. Or something like that.
Anyway, the point is that today I was looking to vote around 3 p.m. and I was worried that going to one of the many elementary schools that were designated polling places would have kids in them, as elementary schools tend to. Actually, I was more worried school would be letting out and I’d be in the middle of serious chaos, so I decided to go to one of the church places.
I’m not a church person. I was, briefly, in a very experimental time in my teens, an evangelical Christian. Oh yeah, I laid on hands. I spoke in tongues. I believed weird things about Christian Scientists. But churches themselves are often kind of neat and if you catch them at off hours, are pretty peaceful.
Somehow… I was unable to find Jesus. And by that I mean that I got lost on the way to the church. I thought I found it, I saw signs for voting and… ended up at an elementary school.
Fortunately, school was not letting out and I was able to nip in and nip out before any children noticed me (their vision is based on movement, so I had to time it just so.) Well, okay, so they were in classes, fine. The point is, I voted.
And if you voted and did get your sticker (the guy at the polling place I was at had his I Voted sticker on his forehead and I was both so amused and went through the process so fast, I forgot to get a sticker!) then look at the stuff you can get!
Don’t know where to go? Find your fucking polling place