It’s So My Mom.

I have been under the false impression all these years that my political zeal was self-inspired. Apparently I was wrong. My mother has been voting all these years. She must have slipped out to the polls in the middle of the night while I was growing up because I was never. Aware. Of. This. Phenomenon.

Another fun fact: My father never votes. According to my mother, he hasn’t been registered for as long as she’s known him. I suppose he thinks that forwarding joke e-mails about the race is enough to fill his patriotic duties. But I didn’t appreciate the “plot to kidnap Obama” joke he sent last week: a picture of a ramshackle box-and-stick trap hovering over a whole watermelon. My dad has always been this crass, but on the heels of an attempted assassination, even I didn’t laugh.

You can see, maybe, why I thought my opinion-rich dad would be the family voter. My mom has strong opinions too, but they’re not always coherent. At least not to my ears. Case in point–I checked up on my mom today and asked if she voted. The conversation eventually came to this:

Mom: “Whatever you do don’t buy Citgo—that’s that slob, that communist from Venezuela. Uh, he looks like an animal. That’s his oil, that’s his gas, so don’t buy that.”
Me: “Well, a lot of the rest of it comes from the Middle East, so what are you going to do?”
Mom: “Well, you can do something about him. He’s an asshole.”

But you know what? At least she votes. Good for her. And shame on me—me AND the bloated beast that is bureaucracy, for both not getting my absentee ballot in on time.

You see, I’m still registered to vote in Texas, though I live in Indiana. And though I requested a ballot via the state’s web site about two weeks ago, I had to go through the nonsensical middle step after that of having a REQUEST FOR A BALLOT mailed to me, which I then had to mail back.

So last night I came home to a notice of “rejection of requested ballot,” because I hadn’t gotten the request in by a certain cutoff date. If that letter had been replaced by an actual absentee ballot form, I could have easily overnighted it, and my vote would have counted. Argh.

I would have voted for Obama/Biden, though. And if you need a good reason, here’s why: Even I would have a clue that the president of France wouldn’t sound like this.

Anyhow, happy election day from Lennifer Jitz and Lonia Sitz.