Voting Rights

I voted this week. Did you vote? Good. You should have. Hopefully everyone reminded you to, as they should have done. Voting's pretty good, right? Freedom and all that. Democracy! Something our grandparents and forefathers fought for in the trenches in Germany or wherever. Yeah, man. Voting.

I voted at a high school a block or two away from me. School was in session, because it was 9:00 on a Tuesday, and the kids seemed pretty annoyed that a bunch of 20-somethings who have lived in their city for a year were coming to vote to gentrify it more and make their neighborhood too expensive to live in. That's what I assumed they were thinking, at least. I don't really know for sure. But that's the vibe I got as I locked my bike up to a signpost outside. Or, really, that's just the guilt I gave myself.

But yeah, I voted. I'm a registered independent, though, so I didn't get to vote in the District of Columbia's Democratic primary, which is where the mayor actually gets chosen. And DC doesn't have a voting member in Congress, as you may be aware, so it didn't really matter all that much, anyway. But I still went. I filled in a few bubbles with a number 2 pencil at a rickety plastic booth, but I did it. I got the sticker afterwards to prove it. I wore it on my jacket all day long.

The process made me a few minutes late to work, though. And all the results were pretty overwhelming -- usually the incumbent won by a margin of at least 10:1. So it didn't really matter, I guess, which bubble I filled in. Briefly, I thought about writing in "My Dick" for mayor, but I figured that democracy is too precious a thing to make dick jokes about. Right? Isn't it?

I don't know. But voting kind of sucks. I probably won't do it next time. Except I like the sticker.