My Voting Day in North Carolina

2014 was really an election about pet peeves. Mine, at least. For example, why do you make people vote at an elementary school but not let school out? I've tried to vote in the morning before and it's a mess of cars and school buses. Today I went late morning after my class and the parking lot was full, mostly because a school was trying to function. We also seem not to like the idea of just having a federal election holiday, which would make it easier for working people to vote. But I digress.

Next pet peeve: normally I get practically attacked when I approach the polling station, as activists lunge at you and try to hand you stuff. It is very annoying and sometimes slightly creepy. Today only one guy could get close to me, and he was slow so I was easily able to side step him as I might do to a slow-approaching zombie. There was another person there, endlessly and oddly repeating "Thank you for voting" to anyone and everyone around.

Inside there were about 25 people in line and 8 voting machines. It took 20-25 minutes, which wasn't too bad. All the volunteers did a great job and all the signing in, etc. went very smoothly. No pet peeves there at all.

Choosing, though, can be problematic in my district. I live in a weirdly shaped district where only one party has won for over 50 years. This year the incumbent was simply running unopposed. North Carolina is an embarrassment in this regard--too many House elections are just jokes. Hooray for the strongest democracy in the world! So I wrote in my own candidate, who may or may not be fictional.

As for the high profile senate race, it was a dispiriting and uninspiring campaign between two--actually, three--terrible choices. On that one I just held my nose and chose. We've been saturated with ridiculous ads that seem to string together non sequiturs. It was the most expensive senate race in history. This too is an embarrassment.

They reached all media. In the past week we took to ignoring the phone. It literally got to the point that my apolitical 12 year son asked me not to vote for either Thom Tillis or Kay Hagan because he was so sick of their online ads. Way to inspire young people!