bonniegrrl | Nov. 2nd, 2004

This morning got up extra early -- I didn’t even hit the snooze button once. Got dressed in the dark and scampered like a cockroach in the morning light over to my polling place to vote. The place I was to cast my ballot just so happened to be a tiny private school in the middle of the Mission only a few blocks from my apartment. When I got inside the small lobby I noticed that there was a vast mix of voters waiting in line to check their names off the registration list –-cranky and happy senior citizens, stressed out moms, a gay couple chatting about Halloween and believe it or not what looked to be a whole gaggle of teens straight out of the TRL audience.

Glancing over the heads of the 30 people in line, I also came to the realization that there were only 8 voting booths, 9 pens and one machine to verify the votes which occasionally jammed or spit out an error message.

I'm not sure what bugged me the most –- the claustrophic feeling of the room, the elementary school kids desperately trying to run through the line to get to their first class, or the old man in front of me who kept gripping about "Kerry and his legion of Manson hippie followers."

When I got to the head of the line, there were no booths to use and all the chairs were used up by people busily voting, so I sat on the dusty floor and went to work.

I finally got through it all, and chose wisely in a 6-page ballot. Us Californians sure know how to add things to a freakin’ ballot. But most importantly I voted against Bush. And when the machine took my ballot without a beeping error noise, I sighed with a sense of great relief. I did my part. This time, let's hope it counts for something.