Voting

I received my overseas ballot for the US elections last week. I got rather pissed off with bso over the fact that even though he was following the US elections closely, he had no intention of voting ("They are both useless"). I gave him the whole spiel about people dying for the opportunity to vote, and how it is a privilege and an obligation and not something to take lightly. I explained that along with the presidential election, there are a host of other issues at stake, like the senate race in California (as well as the Santa Clara Board of Education Trustee Area 1).  Surprisingly he was convinced ad said he would look into registering (he has a few days left, and we will see whether it is all talk).

All that said, I began researching who I should vote for. The big ticket races are no problem, its all the smaller offices and measures that cause grief (like should I vote for insurance companies to base prices on driver's history, and other California state and county measures that are never clear and figuring out who is behind these is always tricky). So I did my civic duty, searched and researched and decided. I filled in my ballot and was happy to see I could fax it into the Registrar of Voters for the County of Santa Clara. This is where the real issues began.

There is no way the ballot pages (two huge double sided sheets) fit in any fax machine. Even scanning them takes three scans per page and I am sure the Registrar of Voters for Santa Clara County is busy enough without having to piece together 12 scanned pages to understand my ballot. It's all rather 80% of California. I seems I will have to go find a post office on this Kibbutz that now houses squint central and actually post the dammed thing.