mushin no shin

I’ve mentioned a few times the new voter re-enfranchisement procedures. Just wanted to post a note to anyone else trying to take care of this: at the ACLU town meeting, Ray Barrett, Administrator of the Davidson County Election Commission, indicated to us that the Certificate of Restoration could be filled out by the criminal court clerk in our county of residence.

After wasting an otherwise pleasant morning of my vacation, the Davidson County Clerk told me otherwise. I emailed the Davidson County Election Commission for assistance.

After a week and a half, a bureaucrat named Joan Nixon was finally kind enough to email me the form I already told her I had, but she did indicate that the form has to be filled out in the state/county of conviction. No explanation as to why Mr. Barrett told us otherwise.

I guess, ya know, you really should have to take time off work and fly 2000 miles or so across the country to fill out a stupid piece of paper in order to get your right to vote back. Because apparently our government exists in a strange nexus of the universe where they have yet to invent these little boxes with keyboards, monitors, & Tubes attached that those of us in the real world take for granted. Apparently it doesn’t even matter than I can go onto the public internet and pull up the record showing it fully closed.

And people wonder why I’m an anarchist.

Well, hopefully I can get them to do it by mail. I’m not going to hold my breath or dare to think it will be done in time for this election though.

The funniest part about all this? Felon voting? Big rigamorole. Felon running for office? Perfectly legal.

(Oh and in case anyone is wondering — I’m a convicted pothead. Real menace to society I was, spending all that time in my early twenties expanding my consciousness and listening to Pink Floyd)

This entry was posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 7:58 am and is filed under Babble, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.