lierdumoa | I got to vote after all!!!

So it all started with my mother calling me at oh butt seven this morning. If you recall, she sent me my absentee ballot request form in the mail, but it never arrived, and I didn't get the chance to re-register here, so I'm still registered to vote in my hometown. I thought I wouldn't be able to vote at all. Apparently on her drive to work she heard on the radio about provisional voting (she's a schoolteacher who works an hour away from where she lives, hence the early call).

Then my roommate (oh, btw I switched rooms with someone on monday, so I now live in a double instead of a triple) pointed out a notice that had gone out to other university students that anyone, so long as they were registered somewhere in California, could go to the basement of the county courthouse and vote.

I walked about fifteen minutes to the take a bus, then walk another fifteen minutes to wait in line only to have some guy tell me, "Sorry, ma'am, you can't vote here."

"But provis--"

"You can't vote here. You have to be registered in this county to vote here."

Now I didn't really know what the fuck provisional voting was. However, I could clearly tell that this guy didn't know what the fuck provisional voting was either. I wasn't about to take his word on it. I found a woman at an information desk and asked her, but she gave me the same "I don't know what I'm talking about but maybe if I say 'you can't do that' with enough conviction this short bitch will leave me the hell alone."

I went back upstairs to the information desk, but by that time it was closed. I let out a resigned sigh and, feeling rather close to tears at this point (because my feet hurt, and goddamnit I was going to miss my physics lab, all for nothing) I headed towards the library across the street to get directions so I could go home.

I noticed that there was voting going on in the library. I asked about the provisional ballot. The guy there explained to me that why yes I could vote, and my ballot would simply be crossreferenced with my hometown where I was registered. So I did get to vote, but what pisses me off is that if I could do provisional voting at the library, that means I probably could have done it at any old voting place, and not spent four dollars on bus fare.

On the bright side, I didn't miss my physics lab! Okay, so I was about an hour late, but lab time is two hours and the lab only took about an hour to do so I managed to work fast and finish before lab was officially over.

Sadly, didn't get a chance to buy head phones. Oh, well. Tomorrow.