Fun in a closed booth

I was in a voting booth for the first time in about a decade yesterday, which is not to say it was the first time I had voted in that span.

As easy as it is to poke fun at Oregon for being a backward, crunchy state, it did have the neat feature of requiring people to vote by mail. I did think it was odd that they began accepting ballots weeks before Election Day, and I concede that there are questions about a process where you can't really confirm that the person whose name is on the ballot actually did the voting. But I'll still take it over the e-voting machines.

Anyhow, Oregon also manages to put together a fairly decent election guide that is mailed to everybody. (Though, because Oregon is a dreaded initiative state, the guide often tends to resemble the yellow pages.)

So I realized last week that I didn't have a clue about what I was supposed to be voting on this week here in CT. I did some quick research on the major candidates and was able to make some relatively informed decisions there, but I apologize for any poor choices I might have made when I was randomly pulling levers for the other offices.

I know I should have not voted for those positions, but I was overcome by my giddiness over being in an actual voting booth. It's fun to pull levers!

And now that I think about it, they should add flashing lights, bells and whistles to voting machines. Because if I represent the average American voter, that's pretty much what those booths are: democracy slot machines.