I Feel Better Now

I woke up this morning a little jumpy, a little filled with that sense of lots of things to do, none of which I so much wanted to do.

Then I went and voted. One of the things which had me somewhat jumpy was the fear that I might not be a properly registered voter, despite the fact that I had been super-confident about my status. "Oh, yes, I'm registered," I told my near ones and dear ones.

My grounds for thinking I was properly registered were pretty good. I had voted in the fall of 2006, and I had not moved since then. So it's not like this was a false confidence. On the minus side, I hadn't received a sample ballot or a polling place notice. On the plus side, I had been out of town for a while, so there was a somewhat complicated mailing issue. Also on the plus side, I had gotten an email from the California Democratic Party.

Anyway, I looked up my polling place and the sample ballot online last night, tried to figure out what I thought about the latest term limits compromise and whether transportation dollars should be kept from the general fund and so on and this morning at 8 I went to vote.

My polling place was kind of a riot. To get there I walked by a pre-school at morning drop-off, where five year olds with complicated haircuts where being comfortingly hugged by parents with German-made SUVs. The polling place itself featured a lot of girls with stiletto heeled boots and Coach-logo purses, and had on the walls photos of transvestites in front of Hollywood landmarks, only the transvestites were, in the photos, way big, towering over theaters and hotdog stands.

A lot of people had to cast provisional ballots. There was a line. When I got to the front, they looked up my name. There I was, a registered voter with a ballot all her own. I went, I marked, I looked it over and fretted about whether I had inked it thoroughly enough.

I guess I just feel safer. I am a properly registered voter; I am a part of a civic polity. There's got to be some protection in that, right?