I Voted! (8 Times!)

I voted today!  8 times!  
This is the first US presidential election where ballets have been sent to overseas voters by email.  You can't actually submit your vote by email though because apparently email is not secure enough.  The options - Mail or Fax.  Yes, fax.  Not sure how fax is more secure than email, but maybe that's something that our presidential candidates could have considered when they were sending old-fashioned emails back in the day ;)
I wonder if they'll fax me back an I Voted sticker
Has anyone actually tried faxing anything in the last 20 years?  Let alone fax something to an international number?  It's not exactly easy...  There's a large quantity of zeros and ones involved, and then the machine beeps and whistles while you stare it it wondering if it's working.  And it keeps making those sounds for about thirty minutes until you give up and walk away.  Just at that moment it usually prints out a piece of paper saying the transmittal failed and you have to start over.  

So I tried that yesterday, and tried again when at first it didn't work.  And then again, and again.  Six times yesterday, times how many attempts the fax machine makes before it quits, maybe 3?  5?  So perhaps my estimate is off, I might have actually voted 30 times yesterday.

This morning I tried one more time.  I figured if that didn't work I was going to give up and mail it.  That's exactly what I ended up doing.  I put the ballet pages together with the signature page that waives your right to anonymity and went to the post office.  The lady said it was just over 500 grams so would cost $8 to mail instead of $2.79.  I said that's fine, mail it.  She said too bad the envelop isn't lighter.  I said just mail the darn thing.  The problem though is that is takes ~6 business days to get there and has to arrive by 5 pm Monday the 14th to be counted so odds are not in my favour.

Then I got back to work and my American coworker told me he had just faxed in his vote.  I asked him how he managed to do that.  He had been using the other printed, so I gave that a go.  Round 8 (or 40?).  That was at the end of the day so I left the machine whirring away.  I wonder if I'll get to vote again tomorrow!

It's interesting seeing the news coverage about the election from Australia.  I can tell that most think the election is very bazaar - and understandably so.  Not that Australia can judge politicians - there have been five Prime Ministers in the five years we've lived here, and one of those changed hands while I was on a flight from Melbourne to Perth.  It wasn't that long of a flight!  But Australia loves to bet on everything, so today I had a laugh when I saw the full page ad in the paper showing each candidate's odds.  I wonder what odds the third party candidates have?

Besides the obvious presidential selection, there were some interesting California proposition measures - banning plastic bags, or requiring other "plastic bags", legalising marijuana, the death penalty...

The world will be watching with great interest tomorrow as the results trickle in.  But regardless of the decision, the world will keep turning on Wednesday.  And in the meantime, I'll keep trying to vote.  For Pedro.

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