My World: voting headaches

Look, there's nothing wrong with standing in line for an hour to vote in a presidential election, if you're someone who likes to stand in line for an hour to vote for the next president of the United States. I'm not one of those people. But I did it.

I had originally planned to walk down to my polling place and be the first to punch the card when the doors opened at 6:30 Tuesday morning. It didn't happen that way.

Oh, I got up at six and got cleaned up and walked down the stairs from my apartment and stepped out into the unusually warm and humid dawn air, only to see a shiny red Toyota Camry, yellow headlights glaring at me, pulling up in the grass just down the street from me.

"What is this?" I wondered out loud. Stupidly, I wondered. It turned out to be the coach of a straggler, the last over eager voter to line up before the poll opened.

There were about 75 of them. I stood stupefied with amazement. "Who are these people?" I said with disgust (so much for community spirit).

I found out who they were. These were the people who had arrived at six or maybe even earlier to get their spot in line in front of the door: busy young professional women in wool slacks and tiny pointy toed stiletto heels, retired couples, middle-aged middle managers busy on their cell phones and Palm tungstens.

There was even a dude in a General Lee orange plastic poncho and rubber boots! Oh, the resolve and resourcefulness of the American people!

Somehow the cutesy poster the apartment management had hung up above each building's mailbox, with the Clinton-esque clip art face and extra toothy grin, (have you noticed the growing nostalgia for Bill?) failed to mention that several thousand of my fellow citizens would all be voting at the clubhouse, too!

I thought this poll would be the exclusive domain of the residents of this complex. So I did what any true American would do: I went home and went back to bed.

Yes, I did go back later and vote. I stood shoulder to shoulder with my fellow Americans, squeezed into and down and around and back out again of a dead end hallway, like a giant human tapeworm, infesting the mighty intestine of Democracy....OK, I got carried away for a second. It gets hot in a hallway with 50 other people and their strollers and their little kids, whose multi-octave vocalizations would force any self-respecting parrot or macaw to bury his beak in shame.

But I digress. I have some advice for the board of elections on how they may speed and ease the election process for their fellow Americans. Got your pencils ready board members? Buy more machines.