Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Voting

I have a sticker that says, "I voted--I made Freedom Count." Nice and dandy, but Florida has a big mouth with feet stuck in it.
I thought, after our elections were made world-famous with our pregnant chads, we would be more careful. I guess I expected too much.
I don't know what happened to the "Help America Vote" Act. It seems in Southeast Florida they are making the voting harder.
My husband and I went out under the drenching rain to vote for the primaries in the same place we always vote: a congregational church in the corner of Sidonia and a very busy thoroughfare. Since the church had a back entrance that was accessible from many other side streets, we and other people, too, tried that one as customary.
I have never missed to vote in any election in my life--except one when we went out of the country suddenly and we couldn't get an absentee ballot--and ever since we lived in our present house, this church was our election place where we voted. They always let voters drive on to the grounds of the church from the back entrance, because coming in from the main thoroughfare is always difficult.
Not this time, they didn't! Somehow it was decided that back entryway, which has most of the parking spots, would be off limits to the voters. Under that blinding rain after making couple of U-turns in that thoroughfare, we entered into the front yard of the church, which had several parking spaces all reserved for the disabled. There were only two parking spaces for other cars. Most of the cars had parked on the soaked grass. One person had difficulty getting his car out because his back wheel got stuck in the mud.
Anyhow, we waited until someone came out of one of the two good parking spaces on the concrete and took that space.
Probably only 20% of the people vote in primaries as it is. Why do they make it so difficult for those who vote?
This wasn't only us though; from what we heard later, really weird things happened to other people. They made someone else vote as an independent while he was a registered democrat. With another one, they made him come back later because they couldn't find his registration at the moment.
I know we live in the weird state of Florida, but does it have to be this weird all the time?