When I was growing up the City dropped off small wooden houses, the size of large Home Depot shed, in all the neighborhoods. We walked by the one on Humboldt Street on the way to school and I couldn’t wait to get inside one of those. When I was finally old enough to vote the houses were gone and the polling stations all had those technical denies where you turned a small metal lever for each candidate and then locked in and cast all your votes with one pull of the big arm. Today, while the rest of the world is going paperless, we fill out large cardboard ballets with markers and then we slide the ballet into a scanner. Well, mine was rejected yesterday and I was pretty sure I knew why.
We had read a bit about the NYS Constitutional amendment. We like a lot of what it was proposing. Our local paper recommended a yes vote and the Times recommended a “no.” The more we read the more we were leaning toward no but just to be sure we asked our friend, Matthew, what he thought. Although originally from Australia he is the most informed person we know. His reply was short but more than we had asked for. “Flip the ballot over and vote no, yes, yes.” That stuck with me or should have but I have a bit of dyslexia. I voted “yes” on the first one and almost a no on the second but I realized I had messed up. I scribbled a big “X” on the answer and filled in the circle for “no.” One of the voting attendants came over and wrote “Spoiled” on my ballet and gave me another.
I tried to do the second one in record time but in my haste I made the same mistake! The assistant said “I’m not supposed to look at the ballet but she went ahead to see what I was doing wrong. Another assistant came over and introduced herself as the Democratic representative. “We need to be nonpartisan.” My ballet was marked “Spoiled” and I was told this would be the last time I could try. Three strikes and I’m out.
I got the third one right and even managed to write-in “Gary Pudup” for Sheriff. I would like to know the story of who was behind that last minute campaign and we may find out tonight as Gary is usually there for Margaret Explosion gigs.
Here’s Inexplicable by Margaret Explosion
According to Rachel Barnhart, Gary got around 1000 write-ins with virtually no campaigning. If the local Dems were not so inbred they would have run him and he would have won. Instead they ran Baxter, an incompetent self-declared Trump supporter who changed parties. He won but I don’t think that bodes well for local Democrats.
I wrote in Gary’s name. And Rachel’s.