Just back from voting. Pretty simple here in the village of Franklin, North Carolina. Rainy day, temperatures in the mid 50s. Got to the polling place about 1105, into the voting booth at 1125, left at 1135. Very friendly group, collegial, not any discussion that I heard about how people planned to vote or about any issue. Somebody was handing out sample ballots so the voters could see what their ballots would look like when they got in the booth - the sample ballots had even been marked to help the voter figure out who to vote for if they weren't sure. All the "suggested" markings were for Republicans. That's odd - or would be - but not here. When I checked in, no identification was required, I just told them my name and where I lived. Then signed the appropriate line with my signature. Sure glad nobody else had claimed to be me and already voted.
We had to fill in the circles with a special? ball-point pen. Then we fed the sheet into a reader and that was it. I asked the guy who sat beside the reader and who handed me my "I Voted" sticker if there was any kind of a paper trail. He looked deeply into my eyes and tapped on the case below the reader, and gave me a half-nod. I looked closely and didn't see any kind of a wink from him. I guess he was on the level and knew what he was talking about. Everybody seemed very happy and were smiling and laughing, and chatting very friendly-like with each other. Village voting.
All voting is local? Yeah. That's true. What has changed is the extent of "local".
Here is a picture I made last week in Athens, Greece. This is one guy's way of spreading the word about how he feels. I'm using one of my blogs. You can do the same. Make your "local" a little bit bigger - Go to MoveOn and add their message to your blog.John Womack.
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