Why I am feeling patriotic right now

OK, most of you have never seen me being patriotic. And usually I'm not*. But today I will tell you why I am feeling patriotic right now.

Flashback to the year 2000, the first year I was able to vote. I was too lazy, didn't know, or didn't care enough to get registered in time. I had wanted to vote for Gore, but when Bush won by such a small margin, I was devastated. I know it sounds silly, but for a second I felt like it was my fault (or people like me) that Bush won. If a few more people had taken the time to register to vote, Bush may not have been elected.

I decided that from that moment on I would always do my best to try and get my vote out. No matter where I was in the world.

Back to 2008. A month before the General Election. I was just getting used to living in Taiwan, and the whole election thing completely slipped my mind. What was I supposed to do? I remembered from 2004, when I voted from Japan, that I had to request an absentee ballot . I printed out and faxed the request on the 14th of October from a Family Mart. The fax machine said that it had succesfully sent the message, but you never know.

So you can imagine I was a little nervous last Friday when I still hadn't received the ballot. Had they not gotten my fax? Or would the bureacrats in DC take way too long to get my ballot to me, causing me to miss the deadline (November 14th for overseas voters, but must be postmarked by the 4th). In that case I could still print and send an emergency ballot.

I sent an email to the group in charge of elections in DC, the Board of Elections and Ethics, asking if they had received my fax and if I needed to print and send an emergency absentee ballot. Of course, if they had not received my request for a ballot, it wouldn't have mattered. I still wouldn't be allowed to vote. On Monday, before leaving school, I checked my email. No answer.

But when I came back from class today I saw an envelope at my door. It was the absentee ballot! Not only that, but they had Fedexed it to me. How cool is that?

I am really grateful to whomever it was on the other side of the Pacific who decided that I, as a voter, needed to get the ballot on time, no matter what. Because of him or her, I can fulfill the promise I made to myself in 2000, and vote.

* The only time I can clearly remember being patriotic for the USA, besides on the 4th of July, is right after the September 11 attacks in 2001, when I put up the stars and stripes outside my window in my apartment in Washington, DC.