As decided yesterday, we took a leisurely stroll over to our local voting station, and were back home 35 minutes later - duty done. The voting process was quick and painless, and went something like this:
- We joined the queue - about 80 metres long at the time.
- We proceeded slowly to the head of the queue, which was at the door of the school building.
- As four people exited, four of us were let into the building (I guess there were about 12 to 16 voters in the building at any one time).
- I handed my Identity Document to the official who scanned the bar-code and printed a little "receipt" of sorts.
- I took my receipt and headed to the next official who found and crossed off my name on a printed list.
- Next, I moved over to the tattoo parlour (kidding) where a little drop of iodine was dripped onto my left thumb nail. (Here's Kerry-Anne's thumb nail.)
- I then moved on to the next two officials who collected and checked my "receipt", and handed me a provincial and national ballot paper respectively.
- Almost done, I walked around to the voting booth, where I took this photo and drew an X in the appropriate blocks.
- And finally, I walked to the table holding the two ballot boxes, and dropped in my ballot papers.
I believe that some people had to wait far longer than we did to cast their vote. I guess it depends on the concentration of voters in a particular area, as well as the efficiency with which the voting station is being operated (along with technical challenges that I believe some had with the bar-code scanners). I took a drive past our voting station this evening just before closing at 9pm - and while there wasn't a long queue at all, there were still people arriving in dribs and drabs. Let's hope that everyone who wanted to vote made it through to the various stations on time.