trials and tribulations

we need to have election day as a national holiday. it took two hours for me to vote today. i'm sure we would decrease wait times and increase participation if we gave people the day off. in other countries voting is mandatory, and while i don't think that should be applied here, i think we need to make it as easy as possible for people to vote.

fixing the news media, the political discourse, and encouraging active knowledge gathering by citizens is another issue; i've found, even after an almost two year long campaign, that people are still staggeringly ignorant about the positions of the two candidates.

related to my post on thursday, i did have to complete a provisional ballot in DC. my name, despite the BOEE's assertion, was not on the voter rolls. i guess i'll find out in a week if my vote counted.

oh, and on top of all that, i flubbed getting a cute girl's number whom i met in the line to vote. a poor showing all around, except for, you know, that whole exercise in democracy thing.