Tread lightly on the things of earth

I availed myself of early voting in Shelby Co., Tennessee today and cast my vote for Kerry/Edwards. Yes! Felt like the culmination of years of struggle to restore sane government to my country. (It’s actually only a milestone; the struggle continues toward making this country well again.)

Upside is, any registered voter in my county can vote early at any of numerous poll locations, so we voted at a convenient African American church location where we were entirely surrounded by black brothers and sisters, which was wonderful. Not least because these were mostly like-minded brothers and sisters, far more so than we’d likely encounter among our neighbors at our usual polling place. That never mattered to me before, but it matters a helluva lot to me now.

Downside is, in a moment of idealistic “trusting the system,” I chose to vote early to avoid the Election Day rush without doing voting equipment research. Hence, I find myself now having cast a vote using a Diebold electronic voting machine. So if, God forbid, our brothers and sisters are disenfranchised by having these votes-with-no-paper-trail discarded, we will absolutely be in solidarity with them.

I spent several hours in turmoil over whether I’ve “thrown my vote away,” but I finally decided that since I can’t turn back time, I’ll note the downside here for others’ benefit and then move on.