Vote!

In Texas we have early voting. No excuse necessary--just show up at the county court house and do your civic duty. Not only do you avoid the crush of election day, but I've learned from hard experience that it's easier to find the court house than actual precinct locations, which tend to move around from year to year or--I kid you not--are assigned to addresses that do not physically exist.

So this morning I head in to vote. Yay me! Only I couldn't find my voter registration card anywhere. Boo me! But hey, no big deal. I've voted in every election and primary since I moved to New Braunfels, and after checking my I.D. the nice ladies running things found me in the computer and signed me in.

We have new digital touch-screen voting machines in Comal County. Um... I'm not impressed. The old color-in-the-arrow paper voting sheets in use up until the most recent primaries were boring and low-tech, sure, but simple and self-explanatory. With the voting machines, the workers had to explain to me how to operate it (push this button to turn the virtual page, this button to change a vote, this button to review your votes, this button to actually vote...). Now, I'm a fairly tech-saavy guy, and I'm not saying that the new machines were all that complicated, but they weren't intuitive. Seems to me that going from a piece of paper and a blue felt-tip marker to a Nintendo system adds a layer of unnecessary complexity. Personally, I never could adjust to Nintendo. Give me my old Atari or Colecovision any day.

But yeah, I did vote. Chris Bell for governor. This may surprise some of you under the impression I'm a huge Kinky booster. I was, until the Kinkster decided to start employing the Clayton Williams strategy of voter alienation, and plunged to fourth place in the polls. Bell's now running a strong second, and my criteria all along has been to vote for the candidate more capable of getting that walking disaster known as Perry out of office. I also voted for seven--count 'em, seven--Libertarians in various races. Okay, so there weren't any Democrats running in those races, but now nobody can accuse me of being a lock-step, party-line voter...

Now Playing: Martin Hummel and Karl-Ernst Schroder 17th Century German Lute Songs