Okay.......................
So I gotta tell you that I did my patriotic duty and VOTED on Tuesday...........yes I am well aware that the election is now old news, but this has been the first opportunity I have had to tell anyone my little story about election day.
At my ripe old age of 34......I have NEVER voted in my entire life....I know.... I should be ashamed.....oh well. I decided that with the Presidential Election being so significant this year, and the fact that I was registered, I was going to vote!!!
The day started off easy enough.....
Che'lia and I found out we'd be voting at the same location so we wouldn't have to go solo!!! YEAH US!!! She had never voted before either (and she's older than me!!) I didn't feel so horribly bad......
We left the branch to go to our appointed voting location at about 10:45 a.m. We were both excited and had spent the morning debating on the candidates and their various stands on the issues facing us. We were both kind of undecided about whom to vote for.........
By the time we arrived, we had made up our individual minds....
We walked into our polling place...........THIS is where things got a bit sketchy.
First of all...
One lesson that I learned about Jefferson County...specifically the High Ridge area...is that apparently every one's last name begins the letters L - Z. For those of you that went and voted, you saw the lines where they broke the alphabet down into four lines. You were supposed to get in the line that contained the first letter of your last name (confused yet??)......THERE WAS NO ONE....ABSOLUTELY NO ONE in the lines marked A - H and I - K.......there were probably 10 people in my line ( the L - R line) and 15 or so in Che'lia's (the S - Z line).....so we got in line and waited........I guess we really shouldn't complain, there were people in some places that waited hours to vote...our measly 20 minutes was nothing.
Fortunately for me....MY line was moving faster than hers!!!
I finally get my turn at the table.....
I hand the nice elderly election worker my ID....
She takes it and ever so S-L-O-W-L-Y starts to search for my name....
I am searching with her....She finally gets to where my name....SHOULD BE...but it's not there...not anywhere on the page!!!! I start to sweat....
I hate confrontation of any kind.......
The nice lady passes me off to another very nice lady that proceeded to make a call to her "headquarters" in Hillsboro....They search for me......No luck. I was there for 25 minutes while they "looked" for me. Apparently I was lost. Meanwhile Che'lia has already voted and is waiting patiently for me....After my 25 minute wait, it was decided that "they didn't know what to tell me".....THAT was their answer.... I, being the non-confrontational person that I am, said OK.
Che'lia and I even went back to the house to try and find my registration card where they send you your polling place....no luck...couldn't find it. So back to the branch we went.....I was very upset about the whole "Not being able to vote" thing.....I felt kind of like a loser =( ...
I thought about it for awhile when we got back......
Did any of you know that I am a Notary Public?? Yep, I sure am......let me also tell you that to be come one.....YOU HAVE TO BE REGISTERED TO VOTE!!!! It's requirement...you gotta do it......I remembered this fact as I sat at my little desk stewing.....So right then and there....I decided to go back to that little polling place and FIGHT for my right to vote =) and that's EXACTLY what I did.
At 4:30 p.m.....I marched my butt back to that line and demanded to vote. As I approached the table I saw the look on the little old lady's face....the "oh no, here we go" look. I said to her:
I am a notary...that means by law I have to be registered to vote to be ONE!!! Please call your office and ask them to search yet again......
She did as I asked and called their little "help" number....for 45 minutes I sat there and listened to the election judge argue with the invisible person on the other end of the phone line:
Yes, they see I'm a notary....
Yes, that means I had to register to vote.....
No, they still can't locate my voter registration....
No, they don't know know what to tell me...
ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH!!!!
I ever so nicely informed them that I was NOT leaving until I got my chance to vote......
FINALLY - the invisible helper on the other end of the phone told my election judge to write me in and give me the damn ballot....
I GOT TO VOTE!!!!
I fought for it and I won!!! That felt better than the voting itself =)!! Too bad Missouri's votes didn't even make a difference, I'd do it all over again though!!!
