Adventures in Voting

Tuesday I went to vote. As I walked up, there was Laura Maczka in red. I never noticed her color selection until someone else said something about it. then I was like, yes, she does like red. I guess there are a few other color preferences too.

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As I walked up, she got out of her chair and took a few steps towards me, smiling. We exchanged greetings and shock hands. She address me as Mr. and grinning I told her Mr. was my dad, not me. We chuckled about it and she said she was trying to be respectful. I guess I haven’t learned that lesson yet, I had just called her Laura. Oops. I guess I will have to try and remember to address her as Ms. Maczka in the future. But truth be told, I still respect her whether the Ms. Is there or not.

She told me she had some brochures, but she wasn’t going to give me one because she already knew how I was going to vote. We did a little bit more chuckling. Not awkward at all. As always, she was very endearing, charming and nice. As a person, I have nothing to dislike her for. But given her position politically, politically I quite say the same. I can’t think of a time when an encounter with her was anything less than pleasant (even though I probably deserve much worse with her).

I met the candidate I was going to vote for on the school board, Ms. Chumney. Told her I was voting for her based on a friend’s opinion of her who happened to know much more about her. Met her husband also, they both seemed really nice.

Amir Omar was out in the parking lot talking to a couple of people. I tried to walk around the corner and sneak into city hall without him seeing me. Didn’t work so well, he spotted me and we talked for a bit. I voted again Amir in 2011 and 2009. It just took me some time to get use to him. There is that Muslim thing and my natural biases based on nothing but impressions. I have come to the conclusion that he is not “one of those Muslims” after watching him for the past 4 years. He is everywhere all the time. Someone said they thought for him to be in so many places all the times, there must be about 5 clones of him. I could probably walk in his footstep a about 15 minutes before throwing in the towel.

He seems to be the real deal, a person who really wants to give to the community. Some people complain that he gets too much recognition for what he does. I think he probably does not get enough recognition and some are just jealous of his drive and energy. His is only one of two council people that I have spoken to where there does not seem to be any hesitation at all to engage and discuss. We don’t always agree, but he does listen and talk.

Laura is the second person like this. We met and discussed a few things before she was elected 2 years ago. We were supposed to get together and finish the discussion after the election. I meekly and politely reminder her a few times and it never happened. To probably be fair about it, I didn’t get pushy with it and make any demands a citizen probably could expect to make of a council member.

So after talking with Amir for a few minutes, I went in to vote. I make three selections: One for Amir, one for Ms. Chumney and one for another council member I will not name. But don’t spread that around.

As I was leaving, I spoke to both Amir and Laura. And then I thought about a post Destiny made   the other day and just grinned a little.