Mid-day notes

When I was a kid, we always had school on Election Day. I remember being strangely fascinated by the scene that played out in our Heartland gymnasium -- the curtained booths, the shuffling feet, the hushed tones, the palpable reverence with which that farming community's adults treated the simple act of voting.

The experience remains a vivid part of my storehouse of memories. My spawns have no school today, and I'm truly sorry that they're missing out.

* * *

I've heard about a few voting machines balking here and there around Ohio today, kind of like those "scattered showers" meteorologists are always talking about -- isolated, brief and minor. You'll have that.

A more disturbing screwup, however, took place this morning at a small polling place just six miles south of us. When the polls opened at 6:30am, the voting machines weren't even there. Shifting gears, poll workers handed out paper ballots -- the wrong paper ballots, as it turned out.

I know that my county's board of elections doesn't get to practice much for its occasional big day, but this stuff isn't rocket science. What happened today at that rural polling place was, by any definition, inexcusable.