Photo by samantha celera via flickr
It’s Friday and we’re still not positive who our governor is. Or are we? Is it Malloy? Is it Foley? I don’t know. It’s difficult to keep up with this whole thing, even with my constant refreshing of the front page of CTPost.com and the Google Alerts flooding my inbox.
I’ve heard all kinds of different reports. It’s either we’ll know for sure later today or we already were supposed to know for sure earlier today. Something like that. Someone else told me that if the groundhog sees his shadow in the bag of uncounted ballots than we’ll know for sure that it was the butler in the library with the iron pipe. It wasn’t a very reliable source. Actually, I think that was me. Yeah, I made that one up.
I’ve totally just given up on it. I don’t know who is going to be our governor but I do know that this isn’t the first time I’ve lived at the epicenter of election day discombobulation.
In 2000, I lived in Florida. To be more specific, in November 2000 I lived in Florida. Remember that? If not, here’s a Wikipedia page, a book, another book, another book and a straight to premium cable movie starring Kevin Spacey to refresh your memory.
I was working at Walt Disney World at the time, in what is known as the “College Program.” I shared an apartment with five other members of the college program. One of them was a real-life Texan and Bush supporter. His name was Tim, as well. It made phone calls a little awkward. Imagine this on a daily basis:
“May I speak to Tim?”
“This is Tim”
“It’s your mother”
“No you’re not my mom. You meant the other Tim.”
It also made discussions of the presidential election interesting. We’d sit in front of the TV and wait for the latest news and debate the situation. In the midst of all that, I’d communicate with friends back home asking me “What’s going on down there in Florida?” as if I knew any more than they did. I was too busy selling Winnie the Pooh plush toys and restocking Princess dresses to investigate the hanging chad situation.
Most recently, I was living in Los Angeles in 2008 during the controversial vote on Prop 8. While the results of the vote were certain, the “Yes” vote won, the fact that it was even on the ballot resulted in uncertainty. Despite Barack Obama’s historic victory in the presidential election, Prop 8 managed to steal the headlines in LA for what seemed like months. Driving home from work was an adventure back then, as the streets were full of protesters from both sides each night after Election Day.
As you can see, I’m no stranger to these voting messes, mishaps and mysteries. The only thing I learned from it is, it gets stranger and stranger every time. I’m no betting man (actually I sort of am), but I’d be willing to throw down a week’s pay (not a whole lot of cash) that the next place I live will definitely have some sort of problem at the polls.
