#853 Voting Bubbles

Not long ago I was voting. It was in Washington State’s new Top Two Primary so it was very exciting. The Top Two Primary came about after a long hard legal struggle—a complex series of sophisticated arguments and debates by the smartest men and women in the world. The chance to vote in a new, freshly Supreme Court-approved primary made the experience of exercising my privilege so much more exhilarating.
I could barely keep my coloring in the bubble.
Coloring in the bubble. How nice that all of our technology comes down to what we learned in kindergarten. Stay in the lines. Keep your coloring neat or your vote won’t count.
You’ll get a U for unsatisfactory young man!
It’s also funny when I went to mail in my ballot. In the time it took to arrange the various nesting envelopes like some bad marriage of origami and Russian matryoshka dolls, I could have gone to my computer and answered six emails.
I was struck by how we vote. It seems like it’s always the next oldest technology that worked. The most common method of mailing and bill-paying these days is the computer and the ease and functionality of email.
So we snailmail in our ballots.
When everyone was using mail to communicate we had to go to a polling place and vote. One day we’ll vote by email, when everyone spends the bulk of their time communicating by text.
Speaking of voting, I learned something interesting. You don’t just pay a simple filing fee to file to run for a state office. It’s based on a percentage of the salary that job pays. 1% to be exact. So to file for Governor you have to have more money than to file for State Representative.
Um...wasn’t this whole democracy thing based on equality of opportunity? So…We can all vote equally like we’re in kindergarten but only those rich enough to apply can run for higher office.
Wow...talk about bursting my bubble.
America, ya gotta love it.