I'll admit, I was a little worried going to the polling place this morning. Watching the news the night before and earlier this morning, I kept hearing reports of extremely long waits. Some places reported wait times as long as 5-6 hours, and I was not looking forward to that. Luckily for me though, my polling place only had about an hour wait. So I was able to get in and out of there fairly quickly and hardly missed any work.

My civic duties are done for the time being, and I feel good about it.

But I'm still disappointed in our country's voting methods. As the world leader in democracy, you'd think we would have a more consistent way of voting. Some places have computers with touch-screens, while others have paper ballots. There is also mail-in ballots, absentee ballots, and early voting. Plus, let's not forget the fact that voting regulations differ from state to state. Here in Arizona our polling places are open from 6am to 7pm. Other states, like Florida, are only open from 8am to 5pm. While, other states like Oregon only have mail-in voting.

It worries me sometimes to think of all these different voting methods and regulations. I know some are in place to help make voting easier, but overall the whole voting system seems kind of chaotic. How accurate of a count do we really get? What's our suspected margin of error, or better yet, what's acceptable?

Still, these concerns will not stop me from voting, and I hope they don't stop any of you either. Democracy only works with an open forum of well informed people who willingly partake in it.