A very Important Task

I have the feeling that normal service has yet to be resumed. It's kind of the way you feel right after Christmas (or, in Scotland- New Year, since the party goes on until 2 January).

Just as you start enjoying yourself and relaxing a bit, deciding it's OK to sleep until 11 am, then wander around in your jimjams, watching crap telly and dipping into boxes of truffle-filled chocolates whilst pouring bottles of brandy down your throat, it's time to go back to work. Ugh. I have yet to finish unpacking, doing laundry, paying the bills, returning phone calls, tending to the withered plants, hoovering up the dust bunnies from under the bed or reading the rest of my bloglist. Bleh.

To compound my general meh-ness, I have picked up a bug on the flight home (or possibly while on holiday- running around that last night in my little strappy top despite the chill). I have scratchy throat and croaky voice. The plan is for me to lie in a little ball in my bed for 48 hours straight this weekend, arising periodically only to do various chores, like put another load of washing on. E. has promised to bring me cups of tea at regular intervals and not make me go to the grocery store.

There is however one essential task I must do. Fill in and post my absentee ballot. The envelope was waiting for me upon our arrival home, and yesterday I finally got around to opening it. I've put it to one side for the moment, figuring that I needed a day or two to reflect deeply upon matters. Such a big decision ahead. It's a tough choice, one that has kept me awake at night, pondering.

Will I vote for John Kerry with the blue pen or the black pen? Or perhaps, the racy number 2 pencil?

OK, I might make light of it, but it is important. Perhaps even more so, given the confession I am about to make. You see, unlike some , who proceeded to actually follow through on their carefully made decision, (albeit one which they may have regretted later), I...well....I....

I'll just say it. Election 2000. I filled in the ballot, then failed to mail it. Repeat, I failed to mail my absentee ballot .

Lame ass excuse? Well, I may have mentioned before that I have this real loathing of posting things. Going to the post office here is just an ordeal that I avoid, wherever possible, especially if it involves standing in line behind people who feel the need to explain their endless life story to the pond-water speed clerk as they carry out whatever it is that seems to take up nine hours, or at best, my entire lunch break.

Mailing the ballot would involve getting stamps to go to America, which means going to the post office. So the envelope sat on my hall table, and eventually, I decided it was too late (though it may not have been) and threw it away.

Now. That would be bad enough, but then it got a whole lot worse.

Because I am registered to vote in Florida. As I was in Election 2000.

That year, I watched from afar in increasing horror the events unfolding before me. As the lawyers waded in and the mudslinging began, I began having nightmares that it came down to just one or two votes difference between Gore and Bush, and then someone discovered that I hadn't posted my ballot, and the fingers of accusation would point harshly my way. Now, I know there is still debate about the final numbers. But it appears to me that in the big scheme of things, the margins were close enough for me to put my head in my hands for the next four years, cringing. What had I done? Or more important, what I had I not done.

It wasn't just even as if I had gone to the polls, and accidentally voted for the wrong person by misreading the buttefly ballot. It was that I hadn't gotten off my fat ass and posted an envelope! I hadn't cared enough to exercise my precious democratic right to vote, a right which the United States generously continues to bestow upon me for federal elections, even though I live overseas. A right that was arbitrarily taken away from some, in error, by the disenfranchisement which went on in Florida (and perhaps elsewhere for all I know) before the election. A right that people have fought and died for.

This is not intended to be a political rant. I had vaguely decided awhile back that while I would generally keep my political views more or less to myself (unless they encroach into reproductive rights, which are of importance to me but which I have not yet really gotten into in my posts). I felt partly like this wasn't really the platform for me to talk about politics, at least not in the broad sense, and partly because I feel like so many other people say it so much better.

But this is not about my political stance. It's about recognising that 4 years ago, I was limp and pathetic, feeling like it didn't really make a difference whether I went to get a stamp. I'm ashamed, because... well, as it happens, it may have made a very big difference. I'm not saying that I, Mare, would have singularly changed the course of American history. But that election was such a revelation to me- how all the individual voices do mount up, how each vote does have some weight.

How it matters.