NYS Absentee Ballot!

This evening I returned to room 205 of Tomorrow's Star after: attending a Qigong class, being held captive at a local Tudi Gong temple and made to watch incomprehensible Taiwanese opera while sucking on a milk candy a sweet silver-toothed Ayi gave me, eating dinner at "the cheap place", and purchasing glue to fix my badangle as well as a really cool eraser. When my eye beheld an AWESOME sight!

My New York State Absentee Ballot!!!!

I have done my best to recreate the wondrous event with writing enhanced by photographs:

I walked across room 205, past my roommate's bed, desk, and dresser. Glancing at our mirror before focusing my eyes on my desk. I saw something strange, an envelope. Who would be sending me mail? Conclusion: No one. It wasn't very long before I recognized the red squiggles above the address as the "Official Election Mail" logo that appeared on my absentee ballot registration form! During the afternoon's excursion I pondered when my ballot might arrive, tentatively concluding that the ballot would arrive after we left Taiwan.

My mother had informed me that someone from the voter's registration office had contacted her stating that the office intended to send the ballot to my home - as that was the only place they were allowed to - despite my request for the ballot to be mailed to Tomorrow's Star. I heard reports of the ballot's printing, but assumed it would take days for the ballot to arrive at my house, days for my mother to bring it to the mailbox and weeks for it to arrive in Taiwan. So, I was hopeful but not optimistic that it would arrive prior to our departure. Consequently this was my reaction:

(For the visually illiterate that is me saying "Yeah!!" not just making a pig nose.) In my ecstatic state I opened the envelope, hardly allowing a moment to breathe from the time that I sighted the red-squiggled envelope to the time that I was dumbstruck by its contents.

Hence, the face of horror.

Luckily all of the physical contents of the envelope, how to vote, and how to submit the ballot were well explained. Unfortunately, while I have my mind made up on the presidential election, I have 5 other things to vote for that I am not even moderately knowledgeable about.

I thought this voting thing was going to be easy. I recounted my ballot receiving experience to my teacher who accurately summed up my feelings: "Yeah, we think we are concerned citizens then it comes to a simple thing like voting..." I certainly have some research to do before casting this bad-boy. While the major party candidates - the de facto bipartisanship of American politics does not tickle my fancy; however, I recognize it is a present reality - appear in more than one place in the voting booths as they do on my ballot? This seems strange, wouldn't it increase the likely hood of a miscount?

I don't know; but, I do know my badangle is back and the weather in Taiwan the past two days has been just as fantastic as the New York autumn I have been homesick for.