Voting Blue in a Red state...for the first time.

I am lucky, in that I live in an area of Houston that is far more Democratic than the area I lived in in Blue state MI. The polling place was fairly busy. I was voter number 159. I opted for paper ballot over electronic voting machine. I still can't get Howard Dean on MSNBC, showing how the program can be messed with, out of my head. There was only 1 booth for paper ballots, but most people were opting for electronic so it wasn't a long wait. The elections judge asked why I opted for paper, and I said,"If it's not broken, don't fix it" and he laughed.

Several spots had to be left blank on judge candidates, and also for county commissioner-no Dem, or even Green, candidates.

I did vote for Bill White. With the exception of his pro-death penalty stance, he's a decent guy. I just wish he looked a little bit less like a golem, for those who vote on the "tallish with good hair" platform.

As I walked out of the polls, I found myself thinking back, to voting with a 2 year old wrapped around my calves, to how it felt to vote for Bill Clinton in a library filled with happy faces, to walking across the street to vote for Kerry with my wonderful husband (who became, after years of Republibertarian beliefs, a more vocal Dem activist than I could ever hope to be)...and was more than a little brokenhearted, for what used to be. Time marches on.

I leave you with this, really awesome, Bill White quote: "I think the politicians ought to spend a little bit more time thinking about staying married themselves than who marries whom."

In Ohio you have to vote electronically.

Where I used to live, in rural Massachusetts, you made X's with a pencil and handed your ballot to some old dude who literally fed it into a box and turned a crank until a bell rang. It was pretty old-timey, but I don't see what the problem was.

I filled in my X's with a Bic pen and it went into a slot in an old fashioned metal box. It wasn't even a scan tron box. It was awesome. :D

:thumbsup: to Bill White for speaking the truth!

:hi:

I still hope that he can pull this off.

:hi:

I voted early, so it was electronic.

I suppose there could have been a write-in, so that's why they are there... but then why bother?

of those candidates we wanted to vote for on the lines provided...only there were no lines provided.

:hi: I am hoping the state steadily turns blue. I really am.

some of us haven't forgotten how he basically threw the doors of Houston open to tens of thousands of Katrina survivors -- incurring the wrath of numerous bigots in the process.

I so want to spit in their coffees and cokes. Luckily, they are a small group in my neighborhood.

Someone get them some lives, please! :wtf: