WE VOTED! (and how!)

We are so excited!  The California Primary is June 7, and we are in France until June 10.  What to do?

First, you ask the folks at the private mailbox company to fed ex your ballots to you.  You watch the ballots scream across the country (Baltimore?) and across the Atlantic.  A day and a half after leaving Berkeley, California, they are out for delivery.  At noon sharp, six hours before their scheduled arrival, a motorcycle delivery guy rings the bell, and brings them up the elevator to the 6th floor.  Voila!

You spend the afternoon reading the voter's pamphlet and researching the candidates as needed, and completing the ballots.

You seal them in their special, official envelopes.

Before you left California, you carefully researched the voting by mail system for international delivery (having spent $100 a pop for France's Chronopost in the past to return ballots by expedited mail, you are not anxious to do that again.)  So at home in California you printed out two sizes of envelopes to use, since you were not sure of the size of the ballots, and no one would or could tell you.

Now you are in France ready to launch your ballots in their special, international envelopes with pre-paid US postage which can be turned over to the US Consulate for delivery to the US.

Your special, official envelopes are too large to fit in the special, international envelopes you brought from home that have pre-paid US postage and official announcements of their contents.

So the next day you take the metro to the nearest office supply store you can find.  You buy two envelopes large enough for the ballots in their own official envelopes.  You take out your scissors brought from home and your packing tape brought from home, and carefully affix the  pre-paid envelopes to the ones you just bought. You ignore the looks from the staff of the office supply store. 


You seal the big envelopes.

You take the metro to the US Consulate, not to be confused with the US Embassy, even though they are right next to each other.  (You could not make a mistake, since the Embassy is guarded by a slew of guys with automatic weapons who don't look like they would be pleased to give you directions if you asked.  And there are signs.) 

You approach the Consulate security tent by the street, where there are groups of people waiting to get in, all clasping reams of papers as they begin to go through a thorough, 2 part search.  You take your ballots out and tell the guard you want to vote.  He asks you if that's all.  When you say yes, he waves you into a second tent (without doing any security check).  There the guards remind themselves what they are supposed to do with ballots.  Then they run the ballot envelopes through an xray machine.  They return the ballots to you, and you put them in a ballot box.  You are told that they will be delivered by diplomatic pouch to the US and deposited into the US postal system in about a week.

You wait a week.  You check your voter profile for Alameda County, but it is just after Memorial Day and maybe there was a lot of mail to process at the Registrar.  You think of reasons your ballots might not be delivered on time, or might be lots.  You plan how to call the Registrar to ask.  You read the news and become even more concerned than you were before, because every day it is more important that your vote be counted.

You check in the morning -- your ballot has not been received.  You check again in the afternoon and

You have voted! 

You are very excited!  The system works!  Voila!