In case any non-Americans are reading this, polling places in the USA can be in very odd places. For the most part, they are in libraries or schools, or churches…but sometimes, they go for the next business, or local home - depending on the area and what is available.
For me, the oddest place I ever had to vote was once in West Hollywood, CA.
It was in a Gay second-hand store.
There was a huge line of voters; little old ladies, Gay men, straight couples - you name it. And as you filled out the form, there was a counter with some rather odd object (cockrings, poppers, bongs) and next to the five polling booths, was another booth (closed off that day) that had porno.
The oddest thing about it? I didn’t hear anyone complain or even comment on the fact.
So, where was the oddest place you ever went to vote?
Does where one filled out an absentee ballot count? If so I’ve voted sitting next to the secondary shield of a D2G reactor, 'cause no one would be there to ‘help’ me fill out the ballot.
Damn it, I was going to go with the, “So there I was in the airplane’s bathroom, when a pizza delivery girl and bank teller walked in,” joke, but you got to the sexual reference first.
In about two weeks, I’ll be heading to the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette to cast my ballot. Not that weird, but a more unusual polling place than the schools and churches where I voted when I lived in Ohio.
I didn’t vote there, my polling place has been a local church for as long as I remember, but friends voted in a beauty shop in the basement of a private home. Seemed strange to me, since it was such a small place, but I guess it worked. It had been a polling place for years.
I voted today. (Absentee ballots rule.) I did so on my deck under a tree with a small dog sitting on the table, watching. Not odd weird, but definitely an unusual location.
According to my Voter’s Registration Card, I live in precinct 38. According to the local News (so to speak) Paper, precinct 38 votes at McArthur Elementary School. So, for our last local election I went to McArthur, maybe 2 miles from my place. The pollworker informed me that I was in the wrong place, I needed to be at Villa Something Elementary (could have been Vista Something, or Something Vista).
Villa Vista, turns out, is only about a mile from McArthur, but I easily drove another 3 miles looking for the place. Once I found it, of course, I wasn’t on the rolls there, either. So, another poll worker gets on a cell phone, talks for a moment and then hands the phone to me. I had no idea who I was talking to, but jumped in all the same with “Hi, I’d like to vote.” The lady on the other side took all my information and informed me that I need to go vote at the Hudson Center.
The Hudson Center is a Senior Citizens Center 2 doors down from my apartment complex, maybe an eighth of a mile from home. Now I know, but I’m voting early anyway this time, just in case.