5 Reasons I Have Been Physically Removed From A Polling Place
Across the United States today, citizens will come together to sit on their phones outside of an elementary school cafeteria, in order to choose the next set of lawmakers to represent them in our government. We’ve received the hundreds of spam texts and emails with subject lines like “EMERGENCY: YOUR MOTHER IS IN DANGER” that then just ask if we have a voting plan. It is finally time to change the course of our local government forever by electing a different comptroller. Today is the day that the course of America’s future will be chosen by the people, or at least the ones whose bosses allow them to.
With all that on the line, the last thing you want to happen is to finally arrive at your local polling place, only to be ejected, unable to cast a vote at all. Should polling places be more friendly to creative expression? Of course. Unfortunately, they’re usually run by big time nerds with absolutely minimal senses of humor. I’m here to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I did, and that you’ll leave the location with a successfully cast vote, not screaming and kicking and with two taser probes sticking out of your left forehead.
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Here are 5 things I can tell you from personal experience do not fly come Election Day.
Holding A Cattle-Style Auction For My Vote
I really still don’t get why everybody was so angry about this one. If there’s two things that I’ve learned are the cornerstone of American political beliefs, it’s that everyone’s vote is important, but that nothing is more important than money. Yet, when I make the move of a savvy entrepreneur to take a free asset (my vote) and attempt to flip it for profit, suddenly no one is proud of my shrewd capitalist instinct. Even worse, I actually ended up LOSING money on this one, because I still owed an hourly rate to the cattle auctioneer I hired to handle the bidding. I guess we’re all just supposed to be happy with the single vote the government distributes to each of us, which sounds like some Communist malarkey to me.
Dart-Based Voting
Look, I have a deep spiritual belief in the power of chaos and fate. I also have absolutely zero knowledge of a single candidate in my country, or what some of these words, like “supreme court”, even mean. Therefore, in lieu of sitting and attempting to wrack my brain for what the “correct” choices would be in a timeline, that as we all know, has been predetermined since the universe came into being, I should be allowed to throw darts at my ballot. I brought my own darts, and it would take like, 3 minutes tops. I’ll throw them away from other voters and also I’m really good at darts, so there won’t be any wild ones. Yet again, however, I found myself zip-tied like a hog and tossed onto the pavement. Unfair!
Asking For A Ballot For My Body Pillow
Now look, I understand that having a risque anime body pillow serve as my romantic partner might offend your “traditional christian values,” but the fact remains that I consider her my common-law wife and she should be allowed to vote. In fact, in the anime that she’s from, she’s actually a really highly respected mech pilot for the government, so you’re kind of taking away a veteran’s rights, if you think about it. Don’t worry, of course I washed the outer pillowcase, so everything is totally squeaky clean and fine. But I guess it’s a whole lot easier to have a member of the National Guard crack my ribs with his boot than to simply give Asuka-chan a ballot.
Feeding The Ballot Machine Cold Cuts
Look, I understand now how a ballot machine works, and get that it’s entirely a self-contained mechanical machine. The first time I saw it, however, I simply assumed, by nature of it being the perfect size to have a little man or goblin inside of it, that there was someone counting the ballots within. WIth that, because I am a good and empathetic person, I worried that they might be getting a little hungry in there. Not to mention that the ballot slot was just BEGGING to have a couple little slices of salami fed into it. Even now, knowing that yes, I made a mistake by sliding cured meats into the ballot receptacle on the voting machine, I still think it’s a bit absurd that a voting machine, that costs SO much money, can’t even handle a measly 3-4 pepperonis. They should have planned for that, at LEAST!
Holding A Grenade
Now I absolutely understand this one, and I want to say right up top that there was absolutely ZERO intent to threaten or bring violence to a polling place. As I tried to explain to the poll workers, this was all just the result of an unlucky morning playing with one of my personal, recreational grenades that I have in my apartment. I just like to hold them in my hand and pull the safety pin out and back in. It helps me think, which I was doing a lot of this morning about who I should vote for. Unfortunately, I was playing with the pin while waiting for my coffee to finish brewing and accidentally dropped it down my sink drain. Therefore, now I have to hold the arm on the side down so that the timer doesn’t start and cause the grenade to explode. Once I vote, then I’ll try to find like a small pond or reservoir to throw it into so nobody is harmed. I feel like this all makes perfect sense if they’d just heard me out, but instead I got tranq darted from a helicopter.
