My Plan To Vote

What's your plan to vote? I have mine. 

Last month I went to the City registrar's office to research it and I discovered: 

i.) I am registered; 

ii.) Early voting opens at City Hall on Friday September 18; 

iii.) The ID requirement now is that I have to bring proof that I live at my registered address. A current utility bill addressed to me at that address will suffice--so I have put my last electric, and gas, bill next to my passport to bring;

iv.) There is no dumb requirement anymore of attesting to a reason why you're voting early. Formerly I always swore that I would be outside of the city limits on that day (it didn't matter when during the day or how far or for how long) and so on election day I would always walk up to the McDonalds a few blocks away and buy a cup of coffee there--it is across the street from Falls Church in Fairfax County; and 

v.) I did NOT make application for a mail-in absentee ballot. If I had, and I did it correctly, I would have to present the actual ballot sent to me by the state or, if I didn't receive it yet (or ever, given the current state of the Post Office under the direction of Trump's yes-man Postmaster DeJoy) or the dog ate it or I lost it or forgot it--no vote for me till I came back with that actual ballot. Or I could mail in the ballot, if it ever came, or I found it, or I taped it together after I got it away from the dog, hoping it would be received by the Friday following the Tuesday election, postmarked before or on November 3, and it fulfilled the proper requirements such as the signature was placed in the proper spot and it matched, by some stranger's scrutiny, the signature on file at DMV or on my original registration. Your signature doesn't change over time, does it? Did you impatiently scrawl that signature because you were in a hurry?

vi.) Voting early in person, and not by mail-in, assures that my vote will be counted immediately at 7 pm on November 3, because the ballot will already be in the polling machine and can be run off instantly electronically along with all the other votes cast in person on November 3. Thus I will not potentially contribute to Trump's possible "red mirage," where he could declare victory on November 3 if he is ahead before the absentee (mail-in) votes can be added to the total and give the true result. Absentee (mail-in) ballots are opened only after 7 pm on November 3 and need to have the envelopes examined for a proper signature, the envelopes slit open and the ballot extracted, smoothed out, and fed into the machine to be counted, a laborious process that could take up to a minute each. Trump could use the time delay inherent in counting these votes to sow confusion and declare further (true) results invalid and give his uneducated, unstable and infatuated supporters all the time and excuse they need to go home and get their long guns to take to the streets in an effort to enforce an illegal vigilante result.

So in summation, here in Falls Church, Virginia, three days from now on Friday September 18th, I will be knocking on my neighbor's door at 10 am and three of us will drive down to City Hall. I will have my utility bill in my pocket, with my driver's license as a backup, and we will vote in this existential election for the democracy we formerly knew.

Oh, and bring a mask. And leave your guns at home, you'll have to pass through a metal detector, and the last time I was there they put my name and phone number down on a contact tracing list.