Take Your Midterms!

It's midterm election day here in New Yawk City so my 10 things are about voting.

1. You should do it.

2. People who say they only vote in national elections because those are the only ones that matter usually really mean, "I don't feel like reading up on all those other people."

3. I don't feel like reading up on all those other people either but they are important.

4. I have met exactly one candidate on my ballot this morning in person. He's running for state committee and he's so young I could practically be his mother. In point of fact I've met his mother, too.

5. Without this local politician my life would be a lot messier, more dangerous and unfair.

6. Re: #2 sometimes I suck at reading up on all those people and therefore go into the booth a little behind the 8 ball. That happened today and I did not like it. But I still voted to the best of my ability.

7. We have a new voting system. Instead of the sturdy, reassuring big metal booths with levers that you pulled we were handing a long sheet of paper and sent to a "private cubicle" to fill it in with a standard issue black pen then we had to go to a computer reader and feed it into that and wait until the computer screen claimed our vote had been counted.

8. I suspect the cubicles are a lot more private if they're not lining a wall with the open part facing toward the middle of the room. This process took a lot longer than the lever pulling process and was way more difficult to understand. The ballot was "organized" in a much different way than the board for the metal box was and it didn't feel logical to me. I don't trust that fucking computer.

9. I also get a receipt for every deposit I put in an ATM, dislike using self-checkout lines at the supermarket and always look in the mailbox a second time to be sure my mail has dropped all the way into the box. Dear Board of Elections, I would really really really like a receipt for my vote next time. If you don't want to give me one that seems like a ginormous red flag to me.

10. No, seriously, you should vote every chance you get.

Photos: Letitia James, New York City Council Member and Kirsten Gillibrand, United States Senator for New York.