wandering around the world of knit-blogs, I see I'm not the only one who misses the big old voting machines (the ones with levers and curtains and that went CHUNK! in a very satisfying way when you recorded your vote).

I remember the first time ever that I voted. I lived in Ann Arbor. I think I was 19 - umm...1988? Yeah, 1988. Was that a Presidential race? I kind of remember that it was.

It was a grey drizzly day and IIRC, the voting was set up in the downtown post office. I remember my shoes squeaking on the tiled floor, I remember the whole room being kind of subdued and grey but I was all excited because - I was a Grown Up now! I could vote! The poll-worker showed me what I needed to do to work the machine, and then let me have at it. And I loved that CHUNK! at the very end of voting. (I like to imagine that the sound of it pleased the shades of my suffragist ancestresses.)

I remember showing - very proudly - my blue cardstock voter-registration card to them to show I was legal. (And later, I remember making a journey down to the courthouse when I moved to Illinois to change my registration and get another card. And changing it again when I moved here, and again - changing precincts - when I moved to my house).

Nowadays, they don't make me show my card. I don't even know for sure where it is. They didn't make me show any i.d., the poll-worker-lady just had me verify my address with her and sign my name next to the printed name-and-address.

We use optically scanned ballots which seem to be a pretty workable system but it's still not FUN like the old lever system was.

But voting is still important to me.

(Maybe it's important to me because I remember as a child going along with my parents to the local library to watch them vote, and thinking it was a very serious and very important thing.)

I will say - a lot of people are calling for Election Day to be a national holiday. Meh. No. My experience is - it will not help voter turnout one jot. People who make the effort to vote will most likely still vote, but the people who don't - well, it would be "Whoo-hoo! Another day off!" and I doubt they'd make the effort, most of them. (As for the argument about people who work long hours: most if not all states do absentee ballots, and many many states - though not mine - now allow early voting.) And there might even be some on-the-fence-about-voting people who get pulled along because co-workers vote who wouldn't, or I can see the night before Election Day being a drinkin' night for many (remember, I work on a college campus). So, no - I actually find myself coming out in opposition to MORE Federal holidays.

and that's not just because my university doesn't give most federal holidays off.

it's just - so many holidays get debased into carpet sales, or days-when-Hallmark-expects-you-to-send-a-card (seriously? I've seen Presidents' Day cards and MLK day cards and even Earth Day cards...) or days for drinkin' and carousin', or sleep-in days, and we forget the real reason.

I'd rather see some flexibility instituted - if you want to be a poll worker, you get the day off to go work. Schedules are adjusted so voting over a long lunch hour or before or after work are a possibility. (But: all that said? I also want to see better ways for people to become educated about the candidates and issues. A vote isn't a vote, IMnot-veryHO, if you're doing it on the basis of a tv ad or two or because you like the person's name.)

And, please GOD, can we not have any more negative ads? I swan, they get worse and uglier and even more hateful every year. It got to the point where I stopped watching local channels altoghether just so I could avoid the ads. (Couldn't avoid them on the radio - but you know? If I bought myself a satellite radio setup, I could avoid them next time...)