The American Grass Roots Voting Infrastructure

Every four years I have the same moment of bewilderment.  It’s that moment when I go on line (or digging through my mail) to figure out where it is I’m supposed to vote.  Every time, I’m told the same thing: “Some Random Person’s Garage”.

In this day and age, in a world full of technology…I’m awestruck by the fact that we still commandeer thousands of garages across the nation in order to cast the vote of millions of United States Citizens.

Ya know what?  I LOVE THIS.

Every time I say that I’m going to sign up for an absentee ballot the next time, but I don’t.  Every time I say to myself that we’ll have technology in place that will allow us all to vote on-line next time around, but we don’t.  The fact is, I may never choose these quick-and-easy options because I love walking 0.2 miles to my neighbor’s garage to cast my vote for the next President of these United States.  To me, that is an amazing thing.  The fact that these votes all get gathered, organized, tallied, and slapped up on our TV screens within such a short period of time is equally amazing.

There’s something about this grass roots voting process that brings me back to my youth, to the days of crayons, neighborhood gatherings, doing things manually, and getting the community together to rally around something so monumental.  We still do this.  A nation of 305+ Million people.  We vote in garages.  We vote in VFW’s.  We vote in apartment lobbies.  We vote wherever we can find a willing host with room for voters.

Amazing.  Now run to your local garage and cast your vote!