Quoth the Raven, “Vote Ever More!”

by Woody

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Quoth the Raven,

“Vote Ever More!”

What writer better to quote on Halloween than Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote in his most-famous poem The Raven: “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering fearing / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

Below are some dark dreams that would make any mortal scream “Nevermore!” loud enough to rattle their chamber door…

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From the moment you fall asleep you find yourself resolutely standing – six feet from the person in front and behind you – in a line stretching more blocks than the eye can see.

Despite dreaming in real time during a full eight hours of sleep, upon awakening you still have not reached the voting booth.

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In another dream, you finally reach the front of the line only to find that you must unlock your high school locker before you can cast your ballot. Taking a wild guess, you spin the dial – clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise – and give the lock a quick yank.

“Wrong! I’m sorry,” the lock tells you, “your signature does not match the squiggle we have on file from when you signed for a FedEx package using your index finger on a touchscreen, so your ballot will not be counted.”

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You walk to your familiar voting place but it has been shut down; so you drive to the next nearest poll but it, too, has been shuttered; so you drive further still and finally arrive at the only open poll in your county only to be greeted by a 10-hour line – which you find yourself standing in naked.

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Your wise subconscious has decided to skip the long lines by using a vote-by-mail ballot. Alas, this results in a different nightmare as you put your ballot inside a security/privacy envelope before putting that envelope inside a second envelope specified for mailing …

… and then, like Russian nesting dolls, you put that envelope inside another, and another, and another until you wake up screaming in frustration.

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In a similar dream, you have mistakenly used your security/privacy envelope to jot down a grocery list on and thus mail in your naked ballot inside the mailing envelope only. When you learn your ballot was invalidated by this technicality, you wake up screaming in anger.

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Again you dream of using a vote-by-mail ballot, but to avoid nesting doll-like envelopes or having the Postal Service deliver it too late to be counted, you take it directly at an official ballot drop box – but are faced with two identical looking ones.

One box contains a tiger that will bite your hand off when you drop your ballot inside while the other box will count your vote correctly. To determine which box to use, you must solve a Rubik’s Cube in 30 seconds or recall your Netflix password on the first try.

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In your final dark dream, your polling site in an affluent suburban neighborhood and you have flown through the line in 2 minutes and 43 seconds.

However, inside the voting booth you realize you have forgotten your election crib sheet. Looking at the propositions you suddenly find yourself again trying to open your high school locker; while standing naked in the hallway; and running late for class to take a final exam you need to pass in order to graduate.

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You awaken each time thinking “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’ ” but then vow, “No, that is wrong. Vote, vote, vote always ever election more!”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …