I mean, it was easy in terms of not having to wait in a line, and the weather was nice, and the pollworkers were all helpful and professional. And I was unconflicted about it — despite my Hamlet routine the last few days — because I love to vote for Joe.
But in other senses…
I showed up at my usual voting place — for the Quail Hollow precinct — and was greeted by the sign you see at the end of the post. Which made me wonder, WTH, but when I got to Gray Collegiate, one of the pollworkers — who normally works the Saluda River site — explained to me that the party, trying to save money, had asked for the reduction in polling places, to save money.
The arrows were helpful, since I’d never been here before…
OK that made sense, since I and everyone else knew the turnout today would be next to nothing, with Joe having no actual competition. (The weird thing, though, is what I heard later from another pollworker who works at another site across the county — she said the voting places are reduced for the Republican primary on the 24th as well. If that’s correct, THAT is going to be a mess, with all the Trumpistas out to crush Nikki’s bones to make their bread, and 90 percent of Democrats turning out to vote for Nikki. Yeah, I made up the 90 percent, but it feels like that.)
Almost everyone else in the place normally works my precinct, since they’re my neighbors. Everyone addressed me as Brad. And there was no point being cagey about what I was there to do, since all these folks knew me and are used to seeing my yardsigns and bumper stickers. So of course, I wasn’t. Cagey, I mean. Not that I ever am. In fact, I probably blathered more about it than was quite right, but it’s not like I was tying up busy people. I only noticed one other voter the whole time I was there.
I had no line to wait in, which was sweet. I went to my little minikiosk thingy (still haven’t learned a term for those things that are not booths), inserted the paper ballot, pressed the screen to vote for Joe, pressed again to check my vote, and pressed once more to print out the results.
Which is when everything went haywire. There were all these distorted images flashing on my screen, and eventually the screen went white. And there were no sounds of printing going on. So one of the workers had to open the machine and make sure nothing had printed, dig out the unmarked ballot, and give it to me to take to another machine.
So I got to vote twice! Of course, it only counted once, but I had the pleasure of doing it twice. Which was nice.
I didn’t remember to take a selfie with my sticker until I got home. It’s at the top. See my hat? I think Michelle Norris gave me that hat when she interviewed me in 2008. Seemed appropriate — as you know by my recent posts, I do consider all things. Rather obsessively…
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Did y’all see? I got the job done:
https://x.com/postandcourier/status/1753938187326464092?s=46&t=9hpHHUq0LMxFRYbY1YQBOQ
Here’s an opinion piece that echos many of your complaints about the primary process: https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/07/opinions/nevada-republican-primary-caucus-brown/index.html. Interestingly enough, just having open primaries is *not* one of the solutions he lists….
I mentioned to my wife that I can’t vote for Lexington County Council. Since no one as a Democrat for county officers, the primary is their general election.
I was an independent voter. But as Senator Graham (T-SC) once said, “The Republican Party has gone bat-shit crazy.”
Now King Trump was to install his daughter-in-law as RNC char. Trump loads up with nepotism.