Eventually One Of The Texas People Voting Today

 Well.

It wasn't easy, but eventually I managed to do my voting duty today.

Apparently today was the first time I have not early voted in my current Texas location. Which means when I showed up at my regular voting location, in the Sikes Senter Mall, there was nary a voting booth to be seen.

I then asked my phone if it knew where the Wichita Falls voting locations were located.

My phone directed me to a location nearer my abode than the Sikes Senter Mall, that being the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles location on Southwest Parkway.

So I made my way back south to Southwest Parkway where I eventually parked after seeing a "VOTE HERE" sign.

I made my way through a byzantine maze to the voting location. Handed over my voter registration card and my driver's license I.D., which is still inexplicably required in Texas, the producing an I.D. thing.

I was then informed I was in the wrong voting location, that my voting location was in the First Christian Church on Taft Boulevard, across the street from Midwestern State University.

There is more than one Christian church at this location on Taft, but the First Christian name is the name of the church, not a reference to its location in the lineup of other Christian churches.

Eventually I found my way to another "VOTE HERE" sign, which you see below.

After following another byzantine maze I eventually found my voting location.

I'd forgotten that in a Texas primary election one does not get what is known as a secret ballot.

After proving one is an eligible voter one is asked if one wants the Republican or the Democrat ballot.

One has to answer this question, out loud, twice.

How embarrassing it must be if one wants to vote Republican to have to announce such out loud for all to hear.

I understand the concept of controlling which primary ballot one gets to vote on, thus helping solve the problem of cross over voters voting for a horrible Republican candidate to help guarantee the Republicans lose against a much better Democrat candidate. For instance, voting for Ted Cruz so there'd be a slimy, creepy Republican opponent for Democrat Beto O'Rourke.

But why can this choice not be made secretly? As in after one enters ones voting code, then selecting, in private, which party ballot one wishes to be voting on?

And why does Texas make voting so difficult? With so many voting locations, which seem to vary with each election? A church voting location? That sort of seems an unseemly thing, what with that whole separation of church and state concept.

I don't remember the last time I ever went to a voting poll location in Washington. Sometime in the 1980s, would be my guess. Washington long ago went to the permanent absentee ballot option, where one got mailed a ballot which one returns by mail. That method has been refined over the years to the point now a registered Washington voter gets their ballot in the mail, and then drops it in one of the many conveniently located ballot boxes.

I just returned from a month in the Arizona version of modern America. Texas always seems so quaint in so many ways when I return from modern America...