Thursday, October 09, 2008

Voting for expat losers

Are you a bit lame like me? Are you an expat disaffected by this year's election and dilly-dallied until it was almost too late to request your ballot. Having procrastinator's regret? Well, here's what you can do about it.

You can get a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot. Sure, your state probably won't count it, but they probably wouldn't have counted your real ballot either. Anyway, doesn't really matter unless it's close - in which case people will be going to court over whether or not to open your ballot. And you wouldn't want to miss out on that kind of excitement. Would you?

And you may NOT have missed your state's ballot request deadline, local conditions vary. Call your local election commission and find out when it is and if you've missed it. If you haven't, request your ballot and then use the FWAB, because your real ballot won't get to you on time. You can then probably sell your real ballot on Ebay to foreigners who are jealous they don't get a voice in electing the leader of the free world. As dim foreigners, they won't know that it's too late to send it in or that you're not even from a swing state.

If you're from the states oft AZ, IA, MT, ND, NE, OR, SC, or WA you can be even lamer and still vote. Just send in the FWAB. I don't really understand the details, but since I've spent almost no time in any of those states except SC and not much there, what do I know? I've barely driven through most of them, only stepped across the Hoover Dam into one of them and three I've never been to at all.

The beauty of the FWAB (besides the fun to say acronym, just say it: fwab) is that you can print it off yourself and just mail it in with your own special envelope. And guess how you make that envelope special? By writing "Security Envelope" on it. Isn't that awesome? I'm not sure, but I think the words need to be written in ink.

You don't even need to know the name of the person you're voting for. Sure, you could use the Internet to look it up, but you could just write Democrat (or presumably Republican or Green or Constitution) and the local election officials will just vote a straight ticket for you. If you're doing the FWAB, it's probably because you're lazy - this one word voting thing should appeal.

Will I be doing the FWAB? No, I will not. Because even though I requested my ballot so late that I probably won't get it in time, I really only did it so that I'd have a souvenir of this historic election. I won't be voting this time. But don't let my total disgust at this electoral cycle deter you. Get your FWAB today.

3 comments:

jen said...

some of us have to use the FWAB because our states (MA) have not got it together enough to mail the ballots in time.

Vol Abroad said...

Ok, then they're the lazy ones.

Anonymous said...

To think I went to the trouble to request an absentee ballot - as I shall be in London visiting Big Orange Country Abroad. (Ah another good acronym- BOCA, Spanish for mouth or bay - the water thing not what you do at the moon during this election cycle) I returned it. Pity Nader et al weren't on the GA ballot,might have voted for him
VolP