Despite some of the snags that other people allegedly hit today, my voting experience was deathly simple. I walked into my polling place at about 7:45am [PST] and was directed to the “green table”. There I gave a trio of blue-haired ladies my name and address and they had me sign the registry. Not one of them asked for any ID. I guess knowing my name and address was enough for them.

When I went to take a picture of the ladies with my cameraphone, they asked me nicely not to. I kindly complied and asked if I could take a photograph in the booth. They said they didn’t see a problem with that and directed me to the next lady who demonstrated the InkaVote [an ink based marking system] system to me. After I demonstrated that I had the hang of things by selecting “Bob Hope”, I was handed a ballot and pointed at an open booth. I voted, grabbed a photo of the process and wrapped my ballot in it’s little paper holder.

As I turned around to slide my ballot into the box I ran into a neighbor of mine. She’s worked at the polls as long as I could remember. If I recall correctly, the polls for a primary were hosted at her house when I was 10 or so. She asked me how my Mom, Dad and brother were – the normal small talk stuff. She also mentioned that they were expecting things to pick up a bit right before 9am. Another voter approached the box so we said our goodbyes and I headed outside.

Just as I was leaving, a gentleman in his 50’s who was sitting in the bed of his truck waved me over. He smiled at me and asked if I wanted a copy of today’s newspaper. He offered me my choice of the USA Today, LA Times, OC Register or Press-Telegram. Apparently he was going to hang out at the poll giving them away until he ran out of newspapers. I picked up the USA Today [For the Jon Stewart article in the life section, not the infographics] and gave him a few bucks to buy some more papers [or at least help him recoup his costs] and walked to my bus stop.

There was something sweet in the air today. Maybe the winds of change are giving us a hint…