voting

It's been a week of voting and results and politics.


It started with casting my absentee American ballot. I emailed a form to request my ballot and followed it with a hard copy with my signature. A few weeks later my ballot arrived along with this insert:

The insert informed me about a website where I could get information on how to send my ballot back home. No worries, the website's chart had New Zealand lists as 'free' and '1-3 day delivery' with Fed Ex. I printed a docket to take to the airport FedEx office and 2 minutes later my ballot was off. I even received an email tracking confirmation that my ballot was received. It was MUCH easier than when I voted in Boston in the last presidential election.

Meanwhile, I spent my week working which involves driving through rural New Zealand, which also had an election this week. The two main parties are National (a bit more consertive, but probably more liberal than the center in America) and Labour (the more progress main party). There is much less spent on election campaigning here. This year it seemed that most of the money was mostly spent on billboards.

Here is one of National's,

on the back of this sign there were two tick boxes with the words "National" and "Guy" like this Labour one that was further up the road.

Under the current Labour government several former state assets returned to the State. Awhile ago, New Zealand experimented with selling off key state assets to private companies with some very mixed results. Now the citizens have had to buy it back (after much of the infrastructure was poached) and there have been worry that a change in government might mean another attempt at privitization.

But then came the US election day. It was big news on the radio here, although some complained that Kiwis should be paying more attention to their own election.

I spent my lunch hour glancing at CNN's website to watch the US map slowly get coloured in red and blue. I really was missing the evening of watching the results come in. This is such an event. The last two elections where not the most enjoyable for me. I stayed up very very late both nights, then I cried.

This year I had rowing practice when the election was called for Obama. I happened to be following the Ambassador's offical car when I drove to rowing practice.

The car was flying the 2nd US flag I had seen that day.

During rowing, an American friend here texted "Obama!" and when I checked my phone after getting off the water, I saw it. That is when I knew. I drove home and caught a 2 minute clip of the acceptance speech on a local music radio show. My eye's welled up with tears as I drove up the hill. It's been an emotional few weeks, and it was nice to have something hopeful to tear up about.

When I got home I saw the 3rd American flag of the day. My neighbor had raised the flag in honour of the election. He said that it was the first time he felt right flying it alone - normally it flies with the Kiwi flag or the All Black flag or the Silver Fern flag - but the night of Obama's victory it flew proudly alone on a bit of Kiwi soil.

It also happened to be Guy Fawkes day - basically an odd celebration of an attempt to blow up the British Parliment - so to celebrate the election results we went and watched fireworks during the only week you can buy and legally fire off fire works in NZ.

The NZ election is on Saturday, which seems very civilized for those of us who work. I always found voting very difficult to juggle with my school-based jobs in America. Also in New Zealand you can vote where ever you wish. If you live in Auckland, but are on a business trip in Christchurch, you simply drive around until you see an orange 'VOTING' sign and then pop in. We voted at a church at the end of our road. It took even less time than dropping off my ballot at the Fed Ex depot. Two ticks, one for the party and one for a representative. That was all.

National won. I really hope this doesn't mean we'll lose too much in the way of government services. It also looks like a man will be prime minister again - I kind of liked having a women in charge:)

Where were you when you heard the election results this year? Have you ever had a change to vote in another country?