Yesterday Was Busy
Mar. 7th, 2012 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillI got my mixing done early, and managed to do two loads of laundry (taking advantage of nice sunny weather for drying clothes) and a load of dishes (thank goodness for appliances where you can set a variable delay) before heading out for the polls.
It was interesting to just sit at the polls and watch. I was not supposed to talk to anyone. Only a few people spoke to me, and it was often things like saying hi, where a smile and a nod did fine--and one of the poll workers would explain I wasn't allowed to talk to them. One man put on a mock frown and said "Are you watching me?" and I smiled at him and gestured "just a little bit" (held up my right hand near my eye, loosely fisted except for thumb and forefinger,the tips of which I brought close together but not quite touching.) Sign language has taught me you can convey a remarkable amount without saying a word and without resorting to ASL as such.
Everybody who came had photo ID. Mostly traffic was light enough that I could watch the door to see if anyone turned away on seeing the "photo ID required" sign, and I didn't see anyone turn back at the door. I did see two people fill out "failsafes" which apparently were required when the address on their drivers license didn't match their address in the voting rolls. On the one hand this arguably matters because exactly which races you vote in sometimes depends on your address even within a precinct. On the other hand, voting should not be a new way of enforcing an up-to-date address on your drivers license, and I thought it wasn't intended to be that way, so I will check on that.
Another problem that came up was that the pollworkers noticed a person whose name was (significantly) out of order in the voting rolls. Their best guess was that this was a woman who had married and changed her last name--her new last name showed up, but hadn't been re-alphabetized by the computer. This is a problem because if they can't find your name on their list you aren't allowed to vote, and it doesn't matter what you have in the way of ID and such. It is particularly a problem in my opinion because it discriminates against women in particular, since we are much more likely to change our names. I will be checking up on this too.
It was damn cold in that cafeteria. After four hours sitting on a hard plastic chair in the cold I was mightily glad to go out to the car, which had been sitting in the gentle March sun for four hours, and sit and read for fifteen minutes until my legs felt less congealed. I feel for the poll workers who were stuck in there for eleven hours instead of four.
Once I had warmed up I got myself some treats from Wal-Mart, then set out for Knoxville to pick up Discount Armageddon on The Very Day. I think this is the first time I have ever done this. I figured while I had driven an hour to Barnes and Noble (the closest B&N to me, according to the store locator on the internet, which is part of why I turn to Amazon so often) I would just check around; shouldn't Patricia Briggs have a new book out today too?
They had a hardback by Briggs in the SF&F section--but it was Iron Kissed which is four years old. I finally had to go and ask at the register. It turned out Fair Game was available--it was just on a special new releases rack. I mentioned my surprise that there weren't any copies available in the F&SF section to the woman at the register and we got into a conversation about that, and Discount Armageddon, and she already reads Briggs and was looking thoughtfully at DA when I left.
There was a nice pile of six or eight copies of DA in the New Arrivals section of F&SF, so the book is generally available in Knoxville.
And I have read about 2/3 of it, and I don't want to talk about it too much before I have finished it, but I am having fun so far. Fair Game is next in the queue.
It was interesting to just sit at the polls and watch. I was not supposed to talk to anyone. Only a few people spoke to me, and it was often things like saying hi, where a smile and a nod did fine--and one of the poll workers would explain I wasn't allowed to talk to them. One man put on a mock frown and said "Are you watching me?" and I smiled at him and gestured "just a little bit" (held up my right hand near my eye, loosely fisted except for thumb and forefinger,the tips of which I brought close together but not quite touching.) Sign language has taught me you can convey a remarkable amount without saying a word and without resorting to ASL as such.
Everybody who came had photo ID. Mostly traffic was light enough that I could watch the door to see if anyone turned away on seeing the "photo ID required" sign, and I didn't see anyone turn back at the door. I did see two people fill out "failsafes" which apparently were required when the address on their drivers license didn't match their address in the voting rolls. On the one hand this arguably matters because exactly which races you vote in sometimes depends on your address even within a precinct. On the other hand, voting should not be a new way of enforcing an up-to-date address on your drivers license, and I thought it wasn't intended to be that way, so I will check on that.
Another problem that came up was that the pollworkers noticed a person whose name was (significantly) out of order in the voting rolls. Their best guess was that this was a woman who had married and changed her last name--her new last name showed up, but hadn't been re-alphabetized by the computer. This is a problem because if they can't find your name on their list you aren't allowed to vote, and it doesn't matter what you have in the way of ID and such. It is particularly a problem in my opinion because it discriminates against women in particular, since we are much more likely to change our names. I will be checking up on this too.
It was damn cold in that cafeteria. After four hours sitting on a hard plastic chair in the cold I was mightily glad to go out to the car, which had been sitting in the gentle March sun for four hours, and sit and read for fifteen minutes until my legs felt less congealed. I feel for the poll workers who were stuck in there for eleven hours instead of four.
Once I had warmed up I got myself some treats from Wal-Mart, then set out for Knoxville to pick up Discount Armageddon on The Very Day. I think this is the first time I have ever done this. I figured while I had driven an hour to Barnes and Noble (the closest B&N to me, according to the store locator on the internet, which is part of why I turn to Amazon so often) I would just check around; shouldn't Patricia Briggs have a new book out today too?
They had a hardback by Briggs in the SF&F section--but it was Iron Kissed which is four years old. I finally had to go and ask at the register. It turned out Fair Game was available--it was just on a special new releases rack. I mentioned my surprise that there weren't any copies available in the F&SF section to the woman at the register and we got into a conversation about that, and Discount Armageddon, and she already reads Briggs and was looking thoughtfully at DA when I left.
There was a nice pile of six or eight copies of DA in the New Arrivals section of F&SF, so the book is generally available in Knoxville.
And I have read about 2/3 of it, and I don't want to talk about it too much before I have finished it, but I am having fun so far. Fair Game is next in the queue.
