Pen-Elayne on the Web

Civic Duties

I'm not going to congratulate anyone for voting, any more than I'd give kudos for sending in a jury eligibility questionnaire (I did both today, by the way). It's like patting someone on the back for basically doing their job. We don't have an overwhelming number of jobs we need to perform as citizens, so this is all kind of the least we can do, unless we're talking about people who can't take voting for granted (still far too many in this country), in which case bravo to those citizens on their continued uphill battle for full enfranchisement.

No real excitement at my local polling place. A steady stream of people but not stifling, and there was nobody in the queue ahead of me at all for my election district, so I went right in, did the deed, and we were on our way to sushi in the space of about two minutes. The only surprise was that nowhere on the ballot was there any indication of the offices for which the candidates were running. Their names and parties were listed, but as far as I could see there was nothing that said "Senator" or "Judge" or whatever. Weird. Anyone else in NYC notice this, or was this just on my voting machine?

Not terribly interested in following the horse-race aspect of this, so I'll probably read more comics than blogs this evening. But at least I've, you know, done my job. No "attagirl"s necessary, it was fairly literally the least I could do.