We have a primary election coming up here. The local congressman is running in a primary against another republican. I am not affliated with a political party, and this election is reinforcing my decision. Tara is currently registered as a Republican. In the last 3 days, she has gotten 4 mailings from people supporting the incumbant. Yesterday, she had a recorded message from the mayor. The day before someone else left a recorded message reminding her to vote. Today, Laura Bush left a recorded message. I didn't get through it, but deleted it. I hope she wasn't inviting us to dinner...
I have no idea how much money is being spent on the primary but the incumbant, but things are getting aggressive around here. Name dropping (which is really all the recorded messages are) never really affects me all at much. I really don't care that Donny Osmond's maid has a sister whose aunt on her hunband's side supports a political candidate. I vote for the person I want to. (At least I vote.)
A couple of years ago, the city council election got pretty warmed up. One lady that was running ended up at our door, but she was a little lost and was 1/2 a block outside her council district. She asked that I vote for her, I told her that I couldn't. She got a brief suprised look, then asked why. I told her it was because I lived in a different district than she was running for, it took a couple of minutes to convince her, but I finally got her straightened out.
I work as an election judge, and have been doing it for 6 or 7 years. One year one of the city council candidates came to the door, identified herself asa candidate, then identified me as an election judge, and wanted to ask for my support. This of course ticked me off. First of all, I was ticked off that she had a list of election judges and was bugging me. Second, she was asking for me 'support', and leaving it some sort of opened ended thing. I briefly wondered if she expected me to electioneer for her at the poll on Election day. I gave her my best "John being curt" performance, and she left.
The last presidential election, some reporter came in and was bugging people who were standing in line about who they were going to vote for. The guy was wearing shorts, and golf shirt, and had sunglasses on top of his head, with a pencil on his ear. I jumped on him right away, you can't be doing that sort of thing in the polling place. I told him he needed to stop right away. He told me he was "the press", and could do whatever he wanted. My response was "Oh yeah?", I folded my arms and gave him "the look". He started blabbering something else, I gave him the option of taking it outside or being escorted out by the cops. He told me I wouldn't call the cops on him, I said nothing, but continued staring him down. He left the building. Victory for me.
This year, we are starting electronic voting. I am the Poll manager, meaning I'm in charge of the polling place. I am sure there will be more than one person worried about those "infernal computers" not counting their vote, recording who they are and how they voted, and there is bound to be one person who thinks the computer didn't do what they told it to do. (I love that one, by the way...) It's also a closed republican primary, there is always someone affliated with another party who demands to vote in the primary. (It's not going to happen) Luckily we also have some stuff to vote on for the city, they can at least vote for something while they are there. It should be an interesting day.
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