Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Take it to the Polls – A kind of Boring Story

Brad and I have been looking forward to this election, interested to see how it would all turn out, so yesterday we headed over to our polling station. All interest faded as we saw the long line winding out through the church door and along the sidewalk.

We could have skipped the line if we'd had a polling registration card or knew our polling station number but we didn't so we dutifully got in the cold line thinking, "How long can it take really?" 20 minutes later I was whiny and cold, wishing for a warmer jacket.

There was a nice looking girl in the line behind us who pulled out her cell phone and called a friend for her polling station (brilliant!) and I was just about to ask her to look up ours as well when she snapped shut her phone and headed in side. About 45 seconds later she was back, finished and on her way home.

Well now I was really frustrated, we were officially going to be late for our evening plans, voting is not supposed to take 45 minutes, there must be a better way. The brilliant idea to call my Mom for our polling station would have been helpful earlier but we finally got inside, found our station and cast our vote.

Moral of the story, next election we've vowed to go to the early polls and skip the unpleasantness of busy election day.

I hope you voted, and that you're experience was better than ours.
Shame on Canada for it's poor, poor voting turnout.
L

3 comments:

chefjama said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chefjama said...

Hey Sis,
I didn't vote. I'm a bit of a "big L" liberal and my absentee ballot would be for Southern Alberta. Not too many NDP, Green Party or Marijauna party supporters in the area. The last time I voted was for Joe Clark in Calgary Central. Not because of the party but because he was the only candidate with a chance to beat the Reform Party. Also, 3 elections in 4 years is getting pretty redundant. Android Harper 3.0 has finished what he set out to do. Bankrupt the Liberal party and increase the apathy. The next gen Andriod Harper 4.0 should be a shoe-in.
On a final note. 45 minutes is not bad when you think globally. People where flying home for the last election in Kenya (the one that Odinga used to destroy the constitution)and then waiting for between 6-8 hours, fighting of roving gangs in some polling stations. We got it pretty good in Canada.

Laura said...

But we've been voting in Canada for years... this wasn't a groundbreaking event just a regular vote. I'd expect that we'd have the voting process down by now.
The Conservatives won by a landslide in Alberta, they could have used your vote :)