Voting can be fun!

I like to vote. And not just for the good feeling of participating in the process of democracy, either. Although that is always good. If you don’t vote, you can’t legitimately complain about those who are elected, can you?

One reason I like to vote has to do with living in (or actually outside of) our small town. Our polling place is in the Town Hall, which is a renovated old house. Pretty cool to be able to go inside there. And while you are there, most everyone will speak to you, including most all of the election workers. One of those nice small town feelings.

For our Super Tuesday election this week, I decided that I would go early. I was supposed to stay home and meet the farrier (that’s a person who trims horses’ feet and puts shoes on them, for all you city folks), but he wasn’t coming until around 8:00. Plenty of time for me to go and come back, I figured.

The Town Hall is just a short drive from our house, probably around five minutes or so. There isn’t anywhere else that we can drive to in that amount of time, unless it is someone else’s house. Not that we know most of the people who live within five minutes of us.

Probably because it was a primary election, there weren’t many people there at all. In fact, the election workers outnumbered the voters by more than two to one. I’m sure part of that was that it was still early, too. I did everything I was told to do, being greeted by everyone as I went by, and then I voted and was out the door. From the time I left home until the time I returned home, twenty minutes had passed. Not that bad at all. And I did my part.

But that isn’t the end of the story. That evening as I was on my way home, Laura called. She was there at the Town Hall. They had evidently been watching for her so that they could ask her to call me. It seems that they had forgotten to have me sign the book while I was there. They had tried to call our house, but by the time they had realized it, the farrier had come and gone and I had left. So they saw that Laura had the same address and made a note to ask her if she came in.

I was close to home by that point, so I dropped in and signed the book. As soon as I said that my wife had called, they all knew my name and what I was there for. More of that small town hospitality.

Once we all got home, I mentioned to Laura that I hoped they hadn’t had to call several people to get them to sign the book. She said that they mentioned I was the third person to vote, and they weren’t quite up to speed yet.

So even though I wasn’t number one (not that I was trying to be), I was number three. Fun!