raphael.longbournprods.com

A couple weeks ago, knowing I would be out of town on voting day, I followed the instructions on my sample ballot and logged into lavote.net to apply for an absentee ballot.

I found the page on the site, entered all my info into the form, punched submit, and was presented with a confirmation page, complete with confirmation code of my submission (which I promptly wrote down).

Earlier this week, after really getting worried that my absentee ballot had never arrived, I called the absentee ballot number for Los Angeles County. The following exchange occurred:

Me: Hi, I filled out a form on your website for an absentee ballot and it hasn’t arrived yet, so I’m kinda worried. I have a confirmation code for that.

Ballot person: What’s your name?

Me: [I give her my name and soc and all that] … but wouldn’t you rather have my confirmation code?

Ballot person: [typing and a pause] You’re not registered in our computer.

Me: But I filled out the form at your website and it was confirmed. I have a confirmation code.

Ballot person: Well you’re not in the computer.

Me: Can I give you my confirmation code and you can check that way?

Ballot person: No. Um, I can’t do anything with that code.

Me: Can I apply for that absentee ballot now, then?

Ballot person: No, it’s too late.

Me: Oh, wonderful. So what am I supposed to do?

Ballot person: You can vote on Tuesday, or go to one of our early voting locations.

Me: I’m not going to be here on Tuesday. The whole point of applying for an absentee ballot is because I’m not going to be here Tuesday. Look, can I talk to one of your web engineers and give them my confirmation code to figure out what happened?

Ballot person: No you can’t talk to one of our web engineers.

Me: So basically this whole confirmation code I got is completely useless and doesn’t confirm anything.

Ballot person: Well.

That was that. I managed to find time to drive to the early voting polling place — the only one in the entire San Gabriel Valley — and do my voting there. But that doesn’t lessen the distaste of my experience.

The Internet will never be a valid and acceptable place to conduct important business like voting if pathetic worms who can’t program a fucking submission form are hired to run government websites.

I should have known not to trust lavote.net the moment I was confronted by a homepage using the most embarrassingly outdated table-based, clunky nonsense for a design. Gotta love that garish primary blue table cell background color for a sidebar, though.

Look, if I receive a confirmation code of any kind as the result of completing a process at any kind of website, I expect to be able to use that code as proof of my submission and as a reference number to enquire about the submission in the future. Am I to now assume that confirmation codes in the future can and very likely will be just so much useless numbers, and not a valid record of my submission at all?

Yes, it’s true. I died.

Yes, it’s true, I came back to life (a very nice little sorceress with a runestaff resurrected me, and she’s offering a very low-interest payment plan to reimburse her).

It’s also true that I wasn’t in a very good headspace for the last few months, and I felt like I had nothing to contribute to the world (not that very many are reading anyway…).

But now that I’ve been resurrected, my brain isn’t working right, so I’ve decided to embark on a journey like many of the rest of you out there, a journey for which I have absolutely no time to spare, but am going to try to do anyway (in other words, I’m a madman).

Yes, that’s right, I’ve joined nanowrimo, or the National Novel Writing Month, where, along with the rest of you, I’ll be trying to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. How good those 50,000 words will be, on the other hand….

My username there is “raphaelt”, and my affiliated region is Los Angeles, so if any of you want to make me a writing buddy, or see how my novel is going, please stop by.

Now to get those words flowing….