A cracked license.

The sickening, unbelievable diminution of America's greatness that I woke up to on November 9, 2016, a wound inflicted upon our great republic by a selfish, short-sided minority of our very own people, enthralled voters chasing a chimera, which hopefully will not ultimately prove to be fatal to our democracy, spurred me to activism.  That extended to voting this week in the primaries in my city where the incumbent Democratic congressman and senator are in absolutely no danger of losing their seats in November, so long as the Russians don't intrude into the process even worse than they did two years ago in aid of our current president, the Kremlin's puppet.

I walked into the polling place and had to spend five minutes in the practically vacant gymnasium while the voter officials scrutinized my driver's license.  In the first forty years of my voting life, I would just announce my name, and vote.  But the current vogue of voter suppression requires a photo ID to vote.   Don't you remember George Washington getting carded at the voting booth?

My OL was cracked right across its bar code.  The official looked at my license, asked me my name and address which I confirmed verbally, the address on it was proper for the precinct and matched their rolls, it wasn't expired and had my picture on it (no smiling!), and then she put it in her optical scanner.  I was not comfortable with having my license scanned but these are the gymnastics our elected officials have foisted upon us in order to exercise our right to vote.  The machine failed to recognize my OL.  The crack, remember?

They took it out and re-inserted it at least half a dozen times.  They puzzled over it.  I suggested the crack across the bar code, from normal usage, but which didn't invalidate my driver's license so far as I know, was preventing the machine from registering the license.  They were literally scratching their heads over what to do.  They finally got a reading on about the sixth try, seating it just so, I guess, and allowed me to cast a ballot.  I foresee lots of problems coming up in November with this system.  They could see who I was from my photo ID which was the preferred one, a driver's license, and the information it bespoke of which I verbally confirmed, yet I had to wait for long minutes while they took this extra step with their little scanning gizmo.  I hope I remember to bring my passport as backup in November.