22 June 2012

Absentee

I have a confession to make. I've never voted. Ok, so I've voted in cooking contests, and for the haircut I think would look best on a girl friend, but never in an actual government election. I know. At 18, I felt under educated and quite frankly, disinterested in the whole process. As a middle class high school student I had no idea if and how such things even effected me. As I got older and educated myself on the roles of government and the social and economic power it had over me and everyone else, I became overwhelmed by the idea of choosing. How could I decide which one person I believed should be in charge of a country, much less all the other people working in less glamorous positions for some concept we're calling 'democracy'?

When Obama began his campaign for the presidential election of 2008, I jumped on the bandwagon. It seemed like for the first time, the spirit behind the Obama camp and my interest in politics agreed. In my late 20s, I was beginning to see first hand the effects of an incompetent and corrupt administration (read: student loan debt, social oppression of certain groups, unjust war, I could go on). I understood the importance of the people's voice at that point. I still, however, did not manage to register to vote before the election. I have to admit, part of me was proud of the fact that I hadn't participated in my punk rock brain's version of the 'corrupt and oppressive system'. The other part of me was nervous and lazy.

Well, I'm over that. I'm at a point where opportunities to do anything even possibly important or helpful are exciting. And even though I'm not much more politically educated or confident in voting, and even though the system hasn't gotten any better, I can see what I don't want. So I've decided to choose what seems to be better.


US President Barack Obama and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner


All this to say, I'll be in Argentina for the next presidential election! So today's task was to register to vote and to request an absentee ballot at the same time. This all seemed very daunting considering I've never made my way to the polls, but in 2012, everything is just internet paperwork. No big deal. You can take care of all of it over at the Federal Voter Assistance Program. Fill out a form, print out the form, mail the form away, get a ballot in my email when November rolls around.

Done and done.

3 comments:

  1. I had voter registration forms in my bag last night. Funny. Thanks for taking part.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Funny, I had voter registration forms in my bag last night Thanks for taking part.

    ReplyDelete