Save something, man

I was rummaging in my garage when I saw a guy with a clipboard across the street. I quickly looked away after momentarily locking eyes and pretended to continue a serious search for something in the closest box. I wasn't finding anything but kept looking hoping he would spare me.

I heard his footfalls across the street and an all too expected hello from the garage door. Here we go, game on. Berkeley people are trying to save the world; they're trying to do good, and they're often good people. They want my money. That's the part that always gets me. The first sign is the clipboard, complete with a few laminated papers with lots of pictures, perhaps a diagram or two. What they really wanna know is~ are you a good person? It reminds me of recent times at the checkout line. Seems whenever I hit Safeway these days the cashier asks me if I'd like to donate to blah-di-blah fund today. Um, no ma'am I'm a heartless person. I'll pass. It's such a tactic.

Anyway, like I said, this guy was a nice person and I didn't have the heart to just brush him off completely. Instead I wasted his time, so that we could at least share something together. After all it was his first day on the job, recently finishing a gig for the DNC doing the exact same thing. Good god what an existence. Did I mention that I detest canvassing?

It reminded me of myself on the streets of Orlando doing the very same thing. Essentially selling a product that I didn't understand very well. A good question for this scenario is: What's better? a lot of poor representation or a little solid representation? I'd go with quality over quantity myself. It also reminded me of a recent story on the radio about the dangers of voter machines. An aspect I'd never considered is that maintenance has to be handled by specialists from private companies. Whereas before poll workers could handle the fine-tunings of the archaic puncher. With so many poll stations on election days, makers and technicians of the voter machine find themselves spread thin. So what do they do? They hire a bunch of techs the day before and hope they hit the ground running the day of. One can imagine the results. It's like seasonal positions gift-wrapping at the mall except these positions are crucial to our system of election.