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Last night I spent a couple hours sitting at poll #100 at Mt. Pleasant Grade School as a New Democratic Party representative. Which is kind of a weird thing for a US citizen who isn't even a permanent resident to be doing, but it's completely legit. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cow was working on the Libby Davies campaign and said they needed help. I thought it would be a novel experience to volunteer with a (from my perspective) far-left campaign that wasn't likely to go down in flames. (And it didn't. Winning feels weird!)
The polling procedures were pretty much the same I'm used to in the States, of course. But I still can't get over how short the ballot was -- it was just parliamentary representation. One question, put an X next to the person you want. Hand counted. Compared to Washington's giant, double-sized, machine-read ballots, it was quite a shock.
It was kind of fun... and kind of boring. It was a lot like being a TA, really. First was the invigilation, sitting around keeping an eye out for anything hinky. Luckily everything ran smoothly at our polling location, but lawyers had to be called in elsewhere because of overzealous application of the new ID requirements. And then when that was done, theexams were markedvotes were counted. Being a party rep, I kept a shadow count to make sure everything agreed in the end -- it did. This process took, of course, much longer than it should have and it was 21:30 by the time we left. hsifyppah joined us and we went down to the mostly-over victory party, just in time to see Libby leave. Oh well.
I find great comfort in the contrast between the grinding tedium of running an election and the enormous social importance that it plays. It's a good sign when things that fraught with emotion and power are deeply boring. The mechanics of changing governments should never be interesting.
cow was working on the Libby Davies campaign and said they needed help. I thought it would be a novel experience to volunteer with a (from my perspective) far-left campaign that wasn't likely to go down in flames. (And it didn't. Winning feels weird!)The polling procedures were pretty much the same I'm used to in the States, of course. But I still can't get over how short the ballot was -- it was just parliamentary representation. One question, put an X next to the person you want. Hand counted. Compared to Washington's giant, double-sized, machine-read ballots, it was quite a shock.
It was kind of fun... and kind of boring. It was a lot like being a TA, really. First was the invigilation, sitting around keeping an eye out for anything hinky. Luckily everything ran smoothly at our polling location, but lawyers had to be called in elsewhere because of overzealous application of the new ID requirements. And then when that was done, the
hsifyppah joined us and we went down to the mostly-over victory party, just in time to see Libby leave. Oh well.I find great comfort in the contrast between the grinding tedium of running an election and the enormous social importance that it plays. It's a good sign when things that fraught with emotion and power are deeply boring. The mechanics of changing governments should never be interesting.