Voting in the Twilight Zone

  Yesterday afternoon I walked with my wife to our local polling site. A truly beautiful day and I wasn't expecting many people to be there. I was surprised by the long line at the the door. We got in queue and as the line moved, we were asked individually if we were Democrat or Republican. I was surprised that I was the only Democrat on line. When I told the lady who asked, that I was a Democrat everyone stopped talking and looked in my direction. Immediately after answering, a large guy, out of nowhere, tried to rush the line screaming, "Where do I vote for Trump?!". Everyone started laughing and making sympathetic comments like, 'I'm with you'. To be honest it jarred me and it was a very subtle repudiation. When I got to the front of the line and signed in, I was given a card. No explanation. I asked,"Where's the voting booth?". I got a blank stare and the reply was just fill out the card. I put an X through each candidate's bubble slot and tried to hand it back to the worker. I was told it was to be fed into the machine. (I had flashbacks from college when I had a computer programming class and I used to constantly feed punch cards into an enormous computer.) I fed my card into the machine and it was rejected. I tried four more times, and the line behind me was building up. I heard grumbling and murmurs of dummy Democrats. Finally a worker came over and tried it. He tried it three times and then asked me if I minded him looking at my card. I said, "No". He said, "Here's the problem - you didn't bubble in the sheets! Here let me show you" - filling in the bubbles, he added, "The bubbles must be filled in completely and without stray markings outside the bubble." Irony of irony, me the dumbest (Democrat) teacher on the planet, who couldn't bubble in my choices! I left that polling site in an embarrassed daze. Who came up with these cards, Randi Weingarten?!