I'm living in Munich right now, and I (dutiful citizen that I am) requested my absentee ballot for here before I left (a few months ago). It never came. However, the upside is, I'm a Washington voter. Which means I have until the 17th to get my ballot in (not that it's going to change anything in Washington, but if you think I'm going to miss out on my first presidential election....). I waited and waited, wanting to give my auditor the benefit of the doubt, but tonight I finally printed out my Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot and I'm voting with it right now.
Why am I diarying this? More on the flip side.
I came back from an extended pre-Halloween Halloween party (the thing about living on the other side of that big body of water is that it's now the middle of the night for me, when a lot of the West Coasters are still checking DK one more time before leaving work) to find that my beloved Daily Kos had become Daily Ad Hominem Circular Firing Squad. I'm not going to go into it. You know what I'm talking about. This is all I'm going to say: it made me sad. You want to know how I feel? Go back and watch Jon Stewart on Crossfire one more time. Look at his expression as he says, "We need your help--and you're hurting us." That's how I feel right now. I'm pretty much normally a lurker here--I didn't even get around to finally registering until I came overseas, and I think this is only my second diary. But I read the site pretty much constantly, and I'm not sure I can do so for these last few days if this is going to be the tone. So that's it--here's my point. I'm voting right now. It's the first time I've ever had the opportunity to vote for a presidential election, and there's nothing that's going to stop me from using that opportunity. This isn't a grand strategy. This isn't going to change the vote, or even change anything for any of you. I'm not including any predictions or analysis. It's just a happy story. I'm voting right now.
Sorry for burdening y'all with this. The tone was just a little bit of a rude surprise when I came home tonight. I couldn't stop myself from reading DK at least 20 times a day through the election even if I was serious about not being able to deal with it. I'm going to finish filling about my ballot now, and then go back to imagining myself as Jon Stewart.