Voting Was Torture inFort Lauderdale, Florida

Voting was torture. It took three hours. The Florida day was dank and cool. I was close to tears by the time I reached the polling booths, from the pain in my hip and the arthritis in my neck and shoulders.

I finished the last three-quarters of a trashy werewolf novel and had time to knock off a few pages in an internet marketing book I am slowly reading.

A man started standing next to me as I read. He didn’t seem to have been there before. I whisperingly asked the older woman behind me if he’d always been there. She said no. As he inched in front of me, I softly said, “Sir, I was wondering where you came from. Because I’m right behind him (I gestured to a man with a baby in carriage), and she’s right behind me.”

“I was always here,” he said.

The elders in line started shaking their heads at this bald-faced lie. “No, you were back there,” several gestured. He didn’t fall back, but waited where he had been standing as we moved forward. I expect he’d try to find another unaware person – as he must have thought I was buried in my book – or a more timid soul than I who would not challenge him. My hip simply hurt too much after two hours in line to put up with a young buttinsky.

Just as we reached the door into the voting room – a cafeteria in this small development of 10 condominium apartment buildings that served three districts – a busload of handicapped elders came in. They were given chairs and ushered into line before us. I mentioned that I was in severe pain, even though I wasn’t handicapped. People even older than I who had been standing near me also started to grumble. the woman behind me insisted that she go to the check-in ahead of two people who were pushed in front of her. She was 70, at least.

No one wants to be unkind to the handicapped, but after two and a half hours on our feet, our own aches and pains were screaming for attention.

I will never again vote at a polling place. Never, never, never. Absentee ballots are inconvenient, because often they are due before I have all the information I need about the local propositions and local candidates. Nonetheless, when a 19^th century voting system is in place, absentee ballot is how I shall have to do it.