High on my Highland polling place

Keep your distance, media scum.

I was the 26th person in line at 6:45. Another fifty people had arrived by the time the election workers at the Mile High United Way polling place at the edge of Highland started the countdown at 6:59: “Five, four, three, two, one… the polls are officially open.”

Then the doors opened, and voters started filing out of the hallway and into the room set aside for voting — quickly, it turned out, because while there were seven stations to check voter registration, there were thirty voting booths. By 7:05, I’d handed my ID to a worker who had a little trouble verifying my identity — “new glasses,” she explained, as she kept pointing to another Calhoun, which made me a bit nervous about signing my name upside down in her poll book. Still, by 7:07, I had my two ballot pages (don’t forget to vote on both sides) tucked inside a blue secrecy sleeve that was thoughtful but useless since it was half the size of the ballot.

By 7:09, I was dropping those two pages into the ballot box (I got to keep the secrecy sleeve) and slapping on the sticker that proclaims “I Voted.”

May you obtain one as easily today. — Patricia Calhoun