When in doubt...

This morning, my brother called. It wasn't that early, but I hadn't gotten to bed until a little after 3:00 AM so when he called a little after ten, I was still hitting the snooze button on the alarm. First he called my house phone.
"hey...It's me. I just wanted to remind you to vote tomorrow because your senator voted against gay marriage..." etc. etc.

Then he called my cell phone.

Waking up late today meant I almost missed the deadline to make changes to my registration should they have been necessary. See, although A___ and I both went down to town hall on the same day, both filled out registration cards right there in the office and dropped them off with the town clerk, both dealt with the somewhat ignorant and possibly stupid town workers there presumably to "assist" with matters like this, only A___ got a confirmation in the mail that his registration had been processed.

He got it last week. I checked my mail several times but nothing. I figured perhaps my letter carrier had done something creative with it. She's like that. I have decided she places the mail into the various compartments of our cluster box based on the principles of Feng Shui. I waited out the week hoping that my card would arrive or a neighbor would come to negotiate a mail exchange. Nothing.

So today is the last day to register as a democrat (in person) with the local registrar of voters. I think it was today at noon in fact. After speaking with little brother, I called the Secretary of State's office. Why them? Because that is what the morons at town hall said I should do if I hadn't gotten a confirmation card. I called and I spoke to someone who said "You should probably call your town's registrar". PROBABLY? I said "You know, they told me that I should call you guys." The woman replied by telling me she was new and this was her first election.

Ok. Now, I've got some sympathy for her at this point. But why (oh why) have this newbie answering the phone the day before the primary? It's not like the CT Secretary of State's office didn't know this was going to be a bigger than normal primary. Maybe they are so busy they had to let a Judy answer the phone at the elections office.

The woman got me the number for my registrar. I called. It was confusing. Finally, the old gal on the other end (who despite the confusion sounded much more competent than the town clerk who "helped" with my registration) said "I have you registered but something's not right. Let me call you back."

Turns out whoever processed it gave me the wrong address. Aw, and here I was blaming the mailman....she does deserve it though not for this issue it seems. Why would I leap to the conclusion that it was the carrier's fault? Because she does suck (A___ frequently gets a neighbor's bank statements), but also because I just sort of naturally assumed that something as important as processing voter registrations would not be left in the hands of idiots.

Turns out A___ also got a confirmation card for another person, not a neighbor. She shared a last name with A___ though. So that's two local registration fuck ups right here in my tiny little apartment complex in my tiny little town. This is troubling, no? Not conspiracy theory troubling, but again, don't you think voter registrations should be processed with a bit more care? I do.

After I vote tomorrow (assuming the repair the town registrar made to my registration actually goes through) I'm planning on asking who processes this stuff. I'm sort of curious now.

Oh and mostly of the point of this was to say if you live here in the US and plan to vote (ever), if you find you have any doubts about whether you are registered or registered PROPERLY, call and ask. I'm hoping to find out today what I should do if I go to vote tomorrow and find that the problem has not been fixed (because now I am finding I just haven't got a lot of faith in the town government). If I discover anything remotely informative, I'll post it.