I am a voter. While I’m not going to tell the world who I voted for (because the whole world reads this and is interested), I will describe my prevoting experience.

For those who didn’t have the chance to hear me complain, I will not be in town for the New Orleans election on April 22. That weekend also happens to be the French Quarter Fest, one of my favorite festivals (it’s free!). I will be in the San Francisco bay area for my father’s wedding.

So I walked to City Hall, the ugliest building in the entire city, and proceeded down the hall trying to find room 1W23. Yep, New Orleans should win the “most confusing and unneedingly complex building number system” award. Sadly, it’s not even as simple as the W standing for west. Most likely the brother of a past mayor was paid 100k a year to develop and maintain the door numbering system. Job well done. Incidently, the architect of this god-foresaken building was probably his cousin.

Back to voting… The room was actually fairly easy to find because of the line of people waiting to vote down its hallway. In case anyone was interested, the makeup of people while I was there was about half to 2/3 white vs. black. I got to see Sen. Mary Landrieu vote right before me. She attempted to appear interested in those waiting in line.

The talkative guy in front of me was as redneck as a New Orleanian could get. He was telling me about how he didn’t know how to use the computerized voting machines. He went on to tell me that he is never going to need to use a computer because:

“My brother doesn’t even have a library card for his parish library, so how would he ever go to Germany and check out a book. Besides, there are enough books here to keep me busy.”

I am glad that it makes as much sense here as it did in person. My only guess is that he was trying to say that he is literate but not computer literate – I’m not sure if that point came across as well as he might have wished.