Where are the hanging chads when you need them?

I was the first to show up this morning at 6:00 when Chicago's polls opened, and was a bit distraught to learn that the 2006 election is apparently doubling as a Windy City arts & crafts project. Yeah…this won't cause any problems.

The local Board of Elections sent me two postcards hyping their new electronic voting machines, but since I knew better, I was prepared to use the standard paper ballot. But this was no standard paper ballot; instead, one had to draw a one centimeter thick line next to a candidate's name, to complete a broken arrow. Confused? I was…and I'm a fucking genius.

Did I mention that it took me 10 minutes to fill out this ballot? Or that there were no available alternatives for the elderly or disabled (besides a wheelchair-friendly voting vestibule)? Oh, the dubious electronic voting machines? They weren't there either.

This is going to be a clusterfuck.