Voting Blue in a Red state...for the first time.

[ScreamingMeemie]

I am lucky, in that I live in an area of Houston that is far more Democratic than the area I lived in in Blue state MI. The polling place was fairly busy. I was voter number 159. I opted for paper ballot over electronic voting machine. I still can't get Howard Dean on MSNBC, showing how the program can be messed with, out of my head. There was only 1 booth for paper ballots, but most people were opting for electronic so it wasn't a long wait. The elections judge asked why I opted for paper, and I said,"If it's not broken, don't fix it" and he laughed.

Several spots had to be left blank on judge candidates, and also for county commissioner-no Dem, or even Green, candidates.

I did vote for Bill White. With the exception of his pro-death penalty stance, he's a decent guy. I just wish he looked a little bit less like a golem, for those who vote on the "tallish with good hair" platform.

As I walked out of the polls, I found myself thinking back, to voting with a 2 year old wrapped around my calves, to how it felt to vote for Bill Clinton in a library filled with happy faces, to walking across the street to vote for Kerry with my wonderful husband (who became, after years of Republibertarian beliefs, a more vocal Dem activist than I could ever hope to be)...and was more than a little brokenhearted, for what used to be. Time marches on.

I leave you with this, really awesome, Bill White quote: "I think the politicians ought to spend a little bit more time thinking about staying married themselves than who marries whom."

[Bill McBlueState]

1. wow, you get a choice of paper or electronic?

In Ohio you have to vote electronically.

Where I used to live, in rural Massachusetts, you made X's with a pencil and handed your ballot to some old dude who literally fed it into a box and turned a crank until a bell rang. It was pretty old-timey, but I don't see what the problem was.

[ScreamingMeemie]

3. We did. I didn't expect it, but there it was.

I filled in my X's with a Bic pen and it went into a slot in an old fashioned metal box. It wasn't even a scan tron box. It was awesome. :D

[Celtic Raven]

2. K&R

I leave you with this, really awesome, Bill White quote: "I think the politicians ought to spend a little bit more time thinking about staying married themselves than who marries whom."

:thumbsup: to Bill White for speaking the truth!

[ScreamingMeemie]

5. Thanks...and welcome to DU a bit belatedly.

:hi:

I still hope that he can pull this off.

[Celtic Raven]

11. Thanks!

:hi:

[tammywammy]

4. I also leave the republicans running unopposed blank

I voted early, so it was electronic.

[ScreamingMeemie]

6. I was surprised to be given the option.

[mwooldri]

7. No use wasting good ink on unopposed candidates.

I suppose there could have been a write-in, so that's why they are there... but then why bother?

[ScreamingMeemie]

10. What's funny is that the instructions told us we could write in the names

of those candidates we wanted to vote for on the lines provided...only there were no lines provided.

[w8liftinglady]

8. Good for you!And thanks for getting out and voting in Texas.We NEED you!!

[ScreamingMeemie]

9. It's not an option not to. No thanks needed.

:hi: I am hoping the state steadily turns blue. I really am.

[KamaAina]

12. Bill White rules

some of us haven't forgotten how he basically threw the doors of Houston open to tens of thousands of Katrina survivors -- incurring the wrath of numerous bigots in the process.

[ScreamingMeemie]

13. ...and that is all my Republican customers are talking about today.

I so want to spit in their coffees and cokes. Luckily, they are a small group in my neighborhood.

[KamaAina]

14. Five years later??!!

Someone get them some lives, please! :wtf:

[ScreamingMeemie]

15. Exactly. It's all they've got and it's not-even-thinly veiled racism.