VOTE!

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

I realize now, that my post about the sticker sounded a little like I was jumping on the Jam-bashing bandwagon, but really, I was just setting up the "Chiquita" comment.

Let's see... Banana Democratic Republic? Starchy place.

I'll stick one in myself, then, too. Sundown Monday evening, the wife and I slipped our ballots into the very sturdy welded-quarter-inch steel and bolted to the pavement official ballot box at the county government center. You couldn't budge one of these things with a bullet. The building has two outdoor ballot boxes, within a stone's throw of each other, and of course there's the basement Office of the Registrar, which during business hours you could hand your ballot envelope in over the counter. No crowds elbowing each other.

In my years here, Ventura County has gone from IBMish punch cards and card punchers to Scantron-type optical scanners and tabulators with bins for the hard copies. With the federal mandate for scanners, and the punchcard things mechanically wearing, we voters got nifty stickers saying "I Voted" from the polls.

The nifty sticker tradition continues with the universal vote-by-mail in California this year -- a dark blue elliptical stickum reading "I Voted By Mail/Voté Por Correo." I had a moment's trouble with it until I figured out that only the blue part, and not what resembled a tan ellipse around the blue part, was the sticker; the tan ellipse was the backing beneath it. Now two Voted stickers adorn my black ballcap, from this election and the last.