electoral blogging

I don't blog much about work here, but tomorrow's my day off (I'm safely in Seattle now for groovy sister reserves) so why not .... No juicy tidbts (read the Portland political blogs for those), but just to say that part of the reason I've been so crazy busy these last few months is that ...

Tuesday is Election Day!

Seeing as the job I'm leaving in 3 short months is as my city's elections officer, that has resulted in lots of work for me. Although generally, by election day my job gets a bit easier. That's because my responsibilities lie more in the getting all the paperwork filed and in order during the weeks leading up to the election than dealing with hanging chads. In Oregon, it's the county elections offices that handle voter registration and balloting come election day. Although really it's been "election day" for a few weeks now ... we vote entirely by mail here in Oregon and ballots went out a few weeks ago.

For the past 8 years or so, I've been taking advantage of vote by mail to gather my friends for a voting party. We bring our opinions, number two pencils, election propoganda and our trusty mail in ballots. We discuss, we debate, we have fun (we drink beer) and we vote. Monday night is the end of an era ... it's my last voting party since I'm leaving this kooky state. (Although since I'm writing from my weekend groovy sister pad in Washington State, I guess in a way I already have left my kooky state ... Washington's kooky too, just in a different way. Oregon = no sales tax and no pumping of your own gas. Washington = no income tax and many other kooky things I have yet to discover).

I'm not the only blogger with electoral politics on the mind. Estefania's got something to say about the electoral "fiesta" taking place in Latin America. And "Omis" is excited that maybe possibly some day the residents of our Nation's Capital might have some official say in the direction of said nation.