Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Ida Clare It's Time to Vote


My Fellow Americans,

Here is your big chance to put up or shut up.  If you don't vote you can't gripe about the mistakes that your fellow voters make.  Well, that's never really stopped me but it sounds good when you are feeling voter righteous.

Voter Righteous is a term I just this minute made up because someone has to make up stuff to keep Google in business.  To be voter righteous you must first vote.  This requires knowing where your voter registration card is.  You will have filed it with your other important papers like the recipe for home-made mosquito repellant and the warranty to that transistor radio you bought back when Y2K was a big deal.

With your voter card in hand you try to remember exactly where it is that you're supposed to go to vote.  If you're like me, you drove to the public building that you thought was your precinct, only to find out after standing in line for twenty minutes that the people who hold these elections are picky picky about who gets to vote where and you, naturally, get to vote some where else.  

That was my experience in the big city.  

Here in Big Thicket, you just look for the herd of pick-up trucks loitering around a parking lot where they don't normally congregate during daylight hours.  My voting site is a church not far from home and it is chock-full of cute little old ladies who wear red and white to go with their blue hair that sit at the desk, stamp your card and ask you personal questions that have nothing to do with voting.  This is because they know your mama, your lack of Sunday School participation and who is seeing your husband on the side.

In a town this size, there are people you only want to run into if you are behind the wheel of your car, but invariably you will find them standing next to you in line while you contemplate which crook you are going to send to Washington to become millionaires on a government salary.  As these things typically go for me, you will find yourself standing next to a guy you stood up for a date last month, someone you owe money to or the town pervert.  Isn't this a great country that they have the right to vote too?

After passing through the voter gauntlet and getting your little sticker that says "Yes, I voted", you will have earned the right to feel righteous too.  Go vote and see if it's true for you.

Hugs,