Dadburn Fluorescent Lights!!!

I appreciate my freedoms as an American.  My father is a veteran-- I am proud of the freedoms I can complain about...and this is going to be one of them:  I voted today.

If you are a local reader of my blog , you may want to close your browser now because there is a good possibility that I am getting ready to launch a complaint about your great-great Memaw....

I live in walking distance to the church in which I vote and I have voted at this location for 16 years.  It is always staffed by elderly volunteers.  I appreciate them volunteering their time, but there needs to be a decisive cut-off as to whom they allow to work on poll days.  My brother swears they take a van to the Alzheimer's ward of the local nursing home, load it up and let the person who has never seen a computer before have dibs on working the ballot table.  He might be right.

There was NO LINE.
NO ONE was in front of me. NO ONE was behind me. 
And it took 3 people, one phone call to headquarters and 20 minutes to find me in the computer.
They were holding my driver's license and voter registration card with the EXACT spelling of my name and address yet could not find me. 
Why?  20 minutes of typos.  Then they blamed the fluorescent lighting making it hard to read my license.
:sigh:

During the 20 minute wait, I got to sit in the voter quarantine area where other people got to stare at me and wonder what I did wrong.  I got out my blackberry and attempted to pass the time by playing brick-breaker but I was yelled at by someone 15 years older than Methuselah's grandma that cellphones are not permitted in the area. :another sigh:

Then...they FINALLY hand me the ballot.
I go to the little voter booth that was clearly built in 1974 by a 6th grade shop class.  I brace the wiggly thing with my knee and attempt to bubble in the ballot.  It soon dawns on me that 90% of the ballot is running unopposed.  :another sigh:

I strongly support voting-- even if it isn't to vote FOR a candidate but to vote AGAINST a candidate or to cancel out the vote of someone else.  So this vent isn't to dissuade voting. 

I guess I have two choices-- I can volunteer my own time or I can put up with it, right?  :another sigh: