Category: Politics

i voted early

whbeebe

We had our ballots mailed to us. We filled them out this weekend, then we dropped them off at an early voting location in Orange County on Monday, the first day of early voting. We didn’t want to wait this time.

We voted all Blue. For the Florida supreme court justices, we voted to have them all replaced. That was because they backed up the gross gerrymandering of the voting districts. Finally, we voted ‘Yes’ for rent control. We’ve been hit with paper junk mail from the “Realtors Issues Mobilization Committee” to vote ‘No’ with all sorts of dire and scary consequuences if we vote ‘Yes’. We’ve already seen what happens when rents go so high that people are driven out into the street to live homeless. Increasing rent pressures are everywhere, not just here in Orlando but all over the state, and other locations we know about.

The first few days of turnout has already broken records here in Orange and pretty much across Florida. Now we just have to wait and see how this all shakes out.

caturday — watching poll watcher training

whbeebe

Today was a poll watcher training session. My wife and I had signed up for a Saturday session using Zoom. I’m no Zoom fan, considering it a hot mess of security issues, but I didn’t make the decision to use Zoom. If it had been my decision I would have chosen to use Microsoft Teams, although I consider Teams to be just barely better than Zoom.

While I was listening to the training little Beau came up and draped himself across my lap and the arm of my chair, then turned to watch and listen. No, Beau will not be a poll watcher. There’s no allowing pets, even if they’re Gingers. Sorry, Beau. But Beau lay there for a good long while before he got up and moved off, apparently bored with the whole thing.

The humans in this household decided to volunteer to be poll watchers because a big call went out from the Democratic party for volunteers. Considering how crazy the mid-terms are probably going to be, we both felt an obligation to help keep an eye on things. I want to stress that we are going to be poll watchers, not poll workers. All we can do is follow the rules, stay out of everyone’s way, and watch and if necessary note.