Three People, 60 Votes

Hick nabbed the last handicap space at the Voting Center. He usually drops me off at the door, then has to park in the lot behind the building. "Looks like they're not too crowded today," he said. JINX!

I took my cane, telling The Pony that I felt fine walking, but didn't know about standing if we had to wait. We started across the driveway towards the door. "I'm trying to hurry, Pony. To beat those people." It was a grandma, mom, dad, and girl toddler coming from the parking lot. We did beat them, by about four steps.

Of course Hick knew one of the ladies coming out. She spoke to him, and said, "Lucky I came early. NOW there's a line."

Indeed. A line backed up through the second sliding glass automatic door. We fell in line, as did the people with the screaming toddler behind us. The line moved a bit, getting me inside the door. The Pony, a credit to Gen Z, sidled up from behind Hick to stand at my right shoulder. Then stepped in front of me as the line moved again. Oh well. I was 10th 11th in line. Insignificant to you city voters, but quite a line for us.

We could see inside the voting room. There were 8 white plastic tables, with 3 chairs at each one. Blue ink pens were on the table to fill out the ballots. Only three per table. No electronic voting machines. All paper here. Along the right wall of the voting room were long tables with election workers. They were in pairs. As somebody would pick up their ballot, the workers would look out the door, hold up a hand, and say, "We can help who's next."

I knew to have my ID ready when my turn was called. Unfortunately, I had reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out my debit card instead. "Oops! You don't want my debit card!" It took one second to drop it back in my pocket and grab my driver's license. The worker who took it was sour-faced. Like I had planned it and was trying out a stand-up routine.

Worker 1 scanned my driver's license. Her little screen brought up my name and address. She turned it and asked me to sign if it was correct. I used a little rubber-tipped half-pen that was in a pile of five or six on the table. A pink one. Worker 1 turned and printed out a ballot from a machine behind her. She and Worker 2 used red pens to put their initials in two boxes at the top of my ballot. They printed out a receipt from the thingy where they had scanned my driver's license, and laid that receipt face-down on a stack of them. "Take this to a table to vote. Pens are on the table. Then feed it to the machine at the back when you're done."

The Pony was at a thin brown table along the back wall, near the ballot scanner. I didn't like the looks of the chairs there. Folding plastic, and low. I chose a white table at the back, which had the molded blue plastic and metal chairs that we had in purple in our school cafeteria. Hick followed a few minutes later, and sat across from me. He said something about one of the names on the ballot.

"I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to talk!"

"Oh, well."

The ballot was front and back, but didn't take long to fill out. I had looked at a sample ballot online the day before, and knew my choices. Our local ballot had:

State Auditor

U.S. Rep

State rep

Circuit Judge

Presiding Commissioner

County Clerk

Circuit Clerk

Recorder of Deeds

Prosecuting Attorney

County Collector

County Auditor

Should judge be retained in office? 4 of them to vote on 

4 Amendments to the Missouri Constitution

1 Proposition

There were 20 things to vote for. Eight of the races had only one candidate. Not hard to choose, since I didn't plan to write in any other choices. I always vote to retain the judges, unless there's been some controversy. I figure it's more efficient than somebody new taking over. Hick always votes to NOT retain judges, becausehe doesn't want them to become corrupt. I guess The Pony broke our tie, though I don't know which way. As for the amendments and proposition, I had researched my issues, and gave two NO and three YES.

I was done first. It only took me two tries to get up out of that chair. I was right behind The Pony to feed my ballot into the scanner. A worker man told me to wait until the light turned from red to green. Then in it went, sucked like (oversized) money into a scratcher machine. Hick followed a few minutes later, as The Pony and I waited in the hall outside the back door of the voting room. It was all very efficient.

The whole process was easy peasy. Except maybe for the 40-mile round trip. A little longer, because of a sidetrack to pick up The Pony. Who took an "I Voted" sticker. Hick and I did not. It feels different when you vote early, and not in a horde on election day.