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Feb 13 2008

Voting

Posted by Mugs @ 6:52 am in Family Print This Post Print This Post

Today was the Virginia Primary where people vote to help determine who will represent each party in the Presidential election. I had voted two other times since I moved to Virginia on both local and federal candidates. Both times there weren’t very many people there with me. Today, I waited in line. It was great to see people actually voting. In Australia, everyone has to vote or they will be fined. In America, when 3o percent of eligible voters participate in a primary, they call it a great turnout. In Virginia, you can choose on the day whether you want to vote Democrat or Republican. There was no one standing in the Republican voting line. Everyone in line was waiting to vote in the Democratic Primary. When I moved here, I was thrilled to find out that Virginia had computerized voting with a paper ballot optional. However, I seemed to be the only one fond of pressing buttons to select a candidate. People trust computers to access their bank account and pay their taxes, but not to vote. They were all taking their paper ballots and their pencils to the voting booth. So, Dale, even though I still pay the bills by writing a check ( I gave up that whole EFTPOS thing when I left Australia, and went back to the dark ages), I did vote using a computer. One woman who was working at the polling place gave Zeke and I stickers of an American flag with the words, “I Voted” on it. I looked at it and laughed trying to think of any Aussie I knew who would wear an Aussie flag “I Voted” sticker. I, of course, wore my sticker proudly.

4 Responses to “Voting”

  1. On 14 Feb 08 at 9:48 am,
    Michael Thompson said:

    The only voting stickers I have seen all say “Don’t blame me … I voted Liberal”. (Australia has two main parties Liberal and Labor, Labor won the last election)

    I think it’s a good idea that in America you get to vote for who will lead the (political) party to the election. I wonder what would have happened in the last Oz (not Kansas) election if we voted for Howard or Costello first.

    Heheheeh … i thought i’d try and copy Mugs and throw in the bracketed bits for a bit of clarification.

  2. On 14 Feb 08 at 4:20 pm,
    Dale said:

    Did you see that Obama had $98 million in earmarks last year? McCain had $0.

  3. On 14 Feb 08 at 5:05 pm,
    Mugs said:

    Did you see that McCain says he’ll keep you in Iraq for the next 100 years and Obama says everyone will be back by 2009?

  4. On 14 Feb 08 at 8:46 pm,
    Mugs said:

    I imagine Karl was wearing one of those “Don’t blame me” stickers.

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