We cast our ballots midmorning at Travis Heights Elementary. I expected many more signs and flyers than the handful we were greeted with. One frantic-looking man was talking to a couple, presumably about an issue of importance to him, just outside the boundary line. As we pulled up to the curb, parking inside the campaigning-forbidden zone and therefore out of his range, he looked a little disappointed.

I was also surprised that we didn’t have to wait very long. On primary day the line stretched out the door, but today there were only ten or so people in line when we arrived. We signed the book, received little blue strips of paper proclaiming us ‘qualified’, voted, and were back in our car within ten minutes.

I never vote early because it makes me nervous. I always think my vote will somehow be ‘lost’. This anxiety has only been intensified by new e-Slate machines, which I don’t have much faith in to begin with. My old lost-vote nightmare involved my paper ballot fluttering out of the locked ballot box into a paper shredder, or something equally unlikely. Now, all I have to do is imagine a power failure.