My First National Election in Florida....

I was so excited to vote in Florida- finally my vote would "count."  In Maryland where I lived it was decidely democratic so it really didn't matter if I voted.  But in Florida we were a "swing state" so I was determined to wait out the lines no matter what - plus of course there are the important local elections in which some of my new friends were running.

Silly me - "my vote counts."  LMAO.  They had already called the election for Obama and people in Miami were STILL in line waiting to vote.  Rumor has it the last voter voted at 1am.  Yeah for you for sticking it out!!

And quite frankly it's a good thing they didn't need Florida.  Oye vey the stories and things I have seen.

How do they vote in Florida? 

1. Wait in line for 15 minutes or 8 hours or something in between;
2. Show Driver's license (isn't that unconstitutional?!);
3. Get GIANT voting cards, mine was 4 pages double sided (aka 8 pages);
4. Go to "Privacy Booth" to fill out cards by filling in circles with black pen;
5. "Privacy Booth" is not large enough to put cards side by side, so shuffle shuffle flip shuffle, try like hell to locate the page numbers, find said tiny page numbers in upper right hand corner that I can't read without my cheaters which I didn't bring, try to figure out if you've filled in all the squares on the 8 proposed amendments and ridiculous (unconstitutional??) "confirmation" of state supreme court judges;  recheck your work 3 times;
6. Go wait in line for "scanner" which will read your card and count your vote and lock up your card after it reads it for safekeeping;
7. Get a sticker and go home.

Apparently a coworker was trying to vote when the scanner broke, so the voter police (one person alone) opened the scanner and took out the cards without anyone else monitoring and no accountability.  What? 

Other voter tallies and voter cards mysteriously disappeared when counts went from 2000 to 1000 (cards vs. scanner counts) in early voting.

So yeah if you were depending on Florida it would've been another 34 days of fighting in courts.  Thank God the rest of the nation figured out how to vote and get it all counted and such.

BUT I VOTED.  Hope you did, too.  If your candidate didn't win, regardless "we" have a President.  I vowed my support for whichever candidate won before the verdict came in, and I hope we can all get behind this President this time.  Fighting each other clearly didn't work the first 4 years.

God Bless America and THANK YOU to the millions of men and women who have sacrificed their time (and some of them their lives) to give me this right to vote.