In theory, these are the safest ballots if the only safety you are worrying about are GOP cabal theories of stolen elections. Otherwise, they are a total pain in the butt. You make any little tiny mistake in filling them out — let’s just say you write too big or you pen goes a tiny bit outside the little circle in which you are supposed to “color,” the machine will reject your ballot as “unreadable.”

Add to that the whole “write-in” aspect of local elections. There weren’t enough candidates, so there were a lot of blanks left on the page. You were supposed to write in the name and address of your candidate. Except they leave you maybe an inch in which to write the name and no space to write the address. And they give you a soft-tipped marking pen, so even if you want to write small, you can’t.

So I wrote in Garry for the job of “Veteran Memorial Representative” even though I have no idea what exactly the job entails and I wrote ME down for school committee because they needed two more members and at least I believe in literacy. Owen wrote himself down for selectman because he thinks they need someone young enough to “get” people who aren’t already seniors which the current select group mostly is.

I had a lot of reading to do, but after all the reading, I filled in the Iittle circles and walked up to where you turn in your ballot.

I was rejected. The machine couldn’t read it and said it couldn’t confirm I was a valid voter.

Long conference. Finally they decided it was either because I exceeded the little round hole you are supposed to fill in or in other words, I wrote too big — OR it couldn’t read my handwriting. Except I printed. Maybe it was the address which wasn’t on a line for addresses because they didn’t have a line for addresses. Despite actively soliciting for write-ins, they didn’t seem to have a ballot that would accept them.

I got a new ballot. This time, I was careful to stay in the little circle. I also didn’t write in an address. No one else in Uxbridge has our names and anyway, everyone knows us, even people we don’t know.

The machine rejected the ballot. Again.

I stared at the machine and at the lady feeding it. “Turn the ballot over and feed it in again.” She did and it went through without a hiccup. Why didn’t I think of that the first time?

Categories: #Photography, Anecdote, Election, Humor, Politics, Voting

Tags: #Election, #Photography, #Voting, humor, Local election, Marilyn Armstrong