I voted today!

I was a little bit afraid I wouldn't be able to. My husband and I applied for absentee ballots a couple of weeks ago (with all the distressing news about electronic voting, we wanted to be able to leave a paper trail). His ballot arrived on Monday, but mine was nowhere to be found. I expected it to show up Tuesday, but no luck. Same thing Wednesday. I was somewhat concerned--we had sent in our requests at the same time, so it seemed like we should receive them at the same time. I started to wonder if I had ended up on some sort of rabble-rouser list and was the target of some nefarious brand of voter suppression. It turned out to be basic human error, though. Our postal person had delivered the ballot to the wrong address. I am very grateful that the person who received it instead delivered it to my front porch today, with Wrong Address written on the envelope in blue pen (thank you, whoever you are!)

Matt and I sat side by side at the dining room table and filled in our ballots with the cute little pencils that came with them. We drove over to the Registrar of Voters to hand-deliver them (to avoid any further human error!)

Now I just wish we could vote about 100 more times each! But that's up to the rest of you. Please, please, please vote next Tuesday (or sooner!) I feel like I have to hold my breath until the results are in, but I'm feeling hopeful. If the Red Sox can win, so can Kerry!

If any of you want to help make sure voters make it to the polls and the election is run fairly, Salon.com is offering a great list of activist resources. I made some phone calls for MoveOn.org over the weekend and plan to make more calls in the next few days.

Stephen Elliot is offering election-day phone calls from authors through his great Operation Ohio project. I just read Stephen's book Looking Forward to I: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Electoral Process. He does a fabulous job combining the personal and the political as he trails the Democratic candidates the year leading up to the DNC. It was great fun to meet Stephen at the MoveOn reading earlier in the month (in his inscription to me in the book, his scrawly writing looks like it says "You are a Jew"--which I indeed am--but my son is pretty sure it says "You are a hero." Stephen is a real hero to me. He is using his position as an author to make true change in the world.)