party at the polls

This is the first election in which my younger two kids get to vote, so yesterday I exercised my birthday privileges and requested (read: decreed) that we all go do early voting together.

I typically like to vote on the the day of the election — there’s an excitment in the air and a fun community feel (a couple times, I’ve physically run to the polls to cast my ballot) — but this year I decided to vote early. I’ll be out of the country up until a couple days before the election, so I wanted to get it done ahead of time, just be absolutely sure I didn’t miss it.

So yesterday afternoon we all met in the parking lot outside the polling station (my husband and I were on our way back from a hike, and my older daughter came from work). There were some last minute jitters — what was on the ballot again? had the online registration been done properly? — but then in we went. The correct names were found in the database, addresses recited, and then the poll workers handed us each a ballot, still warm from the printer, and we filled in our circles, fed our ballots into the the maw of the quietly-blinking machine lurking in the corner, grabbed our stickers from the table by the door, and back out to the parking lot we went.

It was painless, fast, and efficient, and it delivered a nice little civic-duty buzz to boot.

Go on, people Make a plan. Register. VOTE.

This is one party you can attend for free, no birthday required.

This same time, years previous: currently, the quotidian (9.26.22), what we ate, evening feeding, the quotidian (9.26.16), home cut, the run around, she outdid herself, a jiggle on the wild side.