Fascinoma

I voted a few days ago, and it took me two hours. Ordinarily this would have been a purgatorial DMV-like experience, but there was a real, if subtle, vibe of urgency and determination in the room, along with a mitzein sense of mission. The beleagured people who ran the whole show were very pleasant, efficient, helpful and even humorous -- a thing one doesn't often encounter in the hard-pressed DC government worker. I chatted with some gals who were headed down to Newport News to get out the vote for Obama, filling them in a bit on the lay of that estuarial land -- since I lived in that area for many years. I brought a good magazine to read and the time went by fast actually. When it was all over I was actually rather buzzed, I was suprised to realize, with a little cold sweat, like I'd gotten a grain of Ecsatasy in my coffee or something. Not of course that my vote, in the District of Columbia, was anything momentous. But, strange the way the group-vibe can work on you, reaching down into the reptitilian lobes of your brain and goosing things a bit.

Yesterday morning, as I was ironing a shirt I had the local Fox News on for weather and they were giving prominent play to the "ten-hour voting lines" story. It occured to me, that, intended or not, this type of story could definitely help suppress the vote, especially when matched up with deliberate attempts to sandbag black polling by cracker official and scumbag judges. Read here: soldiers, presumptive Republicans in the eyes of McCain, may vote any time at all basically, block people -- not so much.

Professional people, or the relatively privileged anyway, may not have too much trouble devoting all day to voting, but if you're an hourly wage slave, that's a hundred bucks out of your pocket -- if the boss lets you take it off at all. It occurs to me that it would be healthier for America if a lot more people voted. Given this we should go to early and/or weekend voting. We should have voting at least on a Saturday, Sunday and Monday -- this last being a Federal Holiday.