One woman's story to get her damned ballot, come hell or high water.
My husband and I knew that we would be traveling in Argentina when ballots were sent to voters in Oregon. So, like the good little citizens that we are, we marched to the elections office in September to ask them what we should do--you figure that would be enough time, right?
We told them that we were leaving October 9th for Latin America and asked for advice on how to ensure that we would receive our ballots. We seemed to confuse everyone; however (follow me...)
We were not going to be living overseas when they sent out the really early ballots to expats, so that was ruled out as an option for us.
We were not going to be in the country when the regular and absentee ballots were sent to voters. (Oregon is a vote-by-mail state.) So that was ruled out for us.
They were stumped.
With no real solutions from the election office, we decided to have the ballots sent to my parents, who could forward them to us while overseas. Of course, the ballots didn't reach my parents until October 17th.
My parents, who live in the middle of nowhere, couldn't send them to us via FedEx until Monday the 19th. They had to send the ballots to us with a priority designation and no guarantee of delivery date.
(At about this point, you may think that I'm freaking out over nothing, but the way things work here in Argentina, it's best to build in a lot of time for things to go wrong!)
Anyhow, we tracked the ballots on the Internets(!) until they arrived in Buenos Aires today. I stayed home all afternoon to make sure that I was here for their delivery. As I sat working away at the table, I reloaded the tracking page and was informed by Fed Ex that they couldn't deliver my ballots because I wasn't home.
Double Sigh.
I called Fed Ex in Argentina, who told me to wait until tomorrow and perhaps I would receive them if I was home. I then explained that these were my ballots to vote for Obama and that I needed them right away. The Fed Ex operator called the driver and arranged for him to re-deliver the ballots to me today within two hours of my call!
Worried that I would miss him again, I decided to sit by my open window on the 5th floor of my apartment building, leaping up at the sound of any vehicle outside of my place, to see if it was the Fed Ex truck.
Sure enough, the outside buzzer didn't seem to be working for the Fed Ex driver (although it has functioned for everyone else). My low-tech window-delivery-spotting system saved the day and we obtained the ballots.
So, after $150.00 in Fed Ex charges and with the help of my patient parents, we have voted for Obama in Argentina!!!
On a side note, we have had many man-on-the-street conversations with Porteños about the election. So far, they have all been very excited about Obama. For example, there was the older conservative shop owner we bought our umbrellas from during quite the thunderstorm. She told us how impressed she was with Colin Powell's endorsement and how important that she felt it would be to the outcome of the election. I wondered how many people in the United States even knew about the endorsement, and here I was talking about it with a shop owner in Buenos Aires!!
Go Obama!