Disenfranchised.

I voted on Tuesday, but apparently it was all for naught.

I should have seen it coming when the volunteers at the polling place looked at each other in utter disbelief when they looked up my address and saw my party affiliation...

And I quote:

"GRN. What's that?" [looks to her left in askance of the female volunteer sitting next to her]
"Green? Oh. Okay. A Green party ballot. Hmmmm... I'm not sure if we have any left. We didn't get too many of the Other Party ballots." [looking again to her compatriot in stupidity on the left] "Do we have any of those ballots left? Oh, here's one." [looking at me in semi-smug disbelief] "Well, we haven't had one of you yet today so I'm not sure how you are supposed to use this ballot, but the booth for Independents and Greens, etc. is over there in the corner. If you have any questions, let us know. Thanks!" [immediately turns her attention to voter in line behind me and seems relieved that he is NOT a Green like me].

Oh yeah. I should have known right then and there.

Don't they train these people? Or were these two particular volunteers just not listening at that brief point we non Dems and non GOPs were mentioned during the "How to work at a Polling Place" orientation?

When they called the state of CA for that Career Politician Woman, aka Hilary Clinton, so early on, well I again had to wonder... "How can they know so soon? When there are so many paper ballots in the county of Los Angeles alone, and when the State of CA had to de-certify so many touch screen voting stations in several other counties? How can they know?"

I hate CNN. And I hate poor ballot design. But I am increasingly convinced that these kinds of "snafus" are on purpose. Of course they are. They don't want "free thinkers" like me to vote. They want us to only have a choice between Clinton and Obama, or Mitt and McCain. And that ain't much of a choice IMO.

If I were allowed to cross party lines in a CA Primary election, I would have. Anything to keep that Clinton woman from winning! But I can't. You can't either, not even if you are affiliated with one of the two Super Power Parties.

So Ralph got my vote. But in the end, it didn't even matter. CNN says Clinton took CA, so it must be true. Which means we've lost.

Meh.