I voted this morning! Yeah yeah and yeah!

[vlyons]

Yeah I voted this morning in Dallas. My vote is banked! I got there about 6:45am at the Martin Luther King Rec Center. The only snafu was that I was sent an absentee ballot that I didn't ask for. I had asked for one for the primary, but decided to vote in person for the general, because of all the post office untrustworthiness. I was the poll workers first problem. Did I bring my mail in ballot? No. I threw it away. Many consultations among themselves about what to do? What to do? So they had to call into the registrar to cancel my mail in ballot. They were put on hold for 1 hour. I had to sit there (fortunately they gave me a chair) for an hour. Needless to say, I became annoyed with the wait. Take some deep breaths. Practice patience. See the poll worker as trying to do her best to do a good job and faithfully follow the rules. All in all, all the poll workers did a bang up great job. Facility was clean. Hand sanitizer out on the tables. Everyone wearing a mask. Poll workers all wore surgical gloves. Always someone wiping surfaces somewhere. Everyone very courteous. The ballot went on for pages and pages. Lots and lots of judgeships on the ballot. We had touch screen voting machines into which I inserted a paper ballot that got printed and recorded in another machine. So there is a hard copy paper trail. Looking forward to hearing about your voting experience.

[LisaL]

1. Let your story be a lesson to others.

If you get an absentee ballot, but decide to vote in person, don't throw your ballots away and bring them with you. Also check the rules of your state. In OH they won't let you vote regular ballot on election day if you requested an absentee ballot.
Good that they let you vote.

[ananda]

2. In your case, patience definitely is a virtue!

Thank you!

I'm from Dallas. I used to go watch my mother
vote there when I was little. You should have
seen those huge machines with the manual
handles you had to turn for each vote.

When I first started clerking in Houston when I
was 21 as a member of the League of Women
Voters they still had those big clunky machines.

I didn't mind at all. My very first vote for
president was in 1972, for McGovern I think.

I have never not voted ever since, and I have
always voted Dem!!!

[vlyons]

3. I remember gthe big pull-handle machines

My elementary school was a polling place. My mother would take me into the booth and show me how it worked. The first time I voted was 1967, and it was the last time that Texas had a poll tax.

[ananda]

4. Oh that's right.

I remember the poll tax collector coming to our house
and my dad would give him $2.

I also remember Jim Crow vividly, the separate restrooms,
water fountains where the white one worked and the black
one was broken, cleaners, black maids in white uniforms
sitting in the back of the bus, etc.

It was such a different world back then.

I was hoping it would be better by now, but now it's all
so violent and ugly, only people want to go back even
further than Jim Crow, practically back to the Middle
Ages when they had chastity belts and women were all
chattel in some form or other.

I just want this nightmare to end.