Rain at 3:30 am announced the day of washing clean the sins of the last eight years.
We don't get rain often in southern California--this rain had to be a message from the planet, from God, an alignment with karma.
I was at my polling place before 7 am to find a line of over one hundred people--unprecedented. Usually I'm one of two or three with no wait.
The eight years under George Bush have been so long! As I said to a few neighbors and friends I found in line, "At last we can vote the #%@&# out!"
About 100 feet away, I met a volunteer handing me a card explaining why I should vote no on Proposition 8.
"Yes, I plan to vote no," I assured him. I didn't explain that yesterday I spent a few hours with a man from New York who had flown to LA to do exactly what he was doing: working against Prop. 8, including offering information to voters today as they walked toward the lines to vote. (See my other blog, http://www.beachwalkinginsm.blogspot.com/. )
It took me 45 minutes to get in the door, 10 minutes to vote with the Inka-Ballot system and get out, but I accidentally marked Prop. 11 (redistricting by a committee) as a no, voting with the Democratic Party recommendation, when I had changed my mind to vote yes with the League of Women Voters.
Warning to others who make a mistake while voting: just take your ballot back and get a new one.
Instead I inked the "yes" circle next to the "no" mistake, thus making my ballot unreadable by machine. It will have to be handcounted, an event I had sought to avoid by not using a mail-in ballot.
The pollworker offered me the chance to start over with a clean ballot, but I decided not to do that. I will just hope that the voting is not that close on any of the propositions so that when my vote it counted does not really matter.
Driving home I noticed a "Yes on 8" sign that had sprouted in some ivy near a curb, not in anyone's yard. I stopped to pull it out.
If a sign stands in someone's yard, that person has a right to free speech and to post a sign. But signs that people just strew around town on public property I feel entitled to remove.
I stuffed it in my recycle bin along with the 6-7 others I pulled down yesterday in Northridge. May the "Yes on 8" anti-gay signs eventually become composted into acceptance of same-sex relationships in our society, including the right to marriage.
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