You have to have photo ID to vote these days. I’m not sure why - probably something to do with fraudulent voting but you’re welcome to speculate about more sinister things, like suppression of turnout or something. Either way, I pulled my driving licence out of my wallet and told the clerk my address and my name. Sammy was already on her way to the voting booth.
“Really?” said the old man at the table, peering over his spectacles at my photo. My heart sped up just a little. Sure, it’s an old photo but at least the proportions of my face must be right. I mean it really is me. It’s my face! Though, I do admit, that in many ways that young man with long curly hair… is certainly gone.
“It is me,” I laughed. He chuckled too, which is a good sign. It would have been a lot of trouble for me to forge a driving licence with my name, my address, and then someone else’s photo. Kind of daft to try. The logic was sound.
“Alright,” he continued, smiling. He crossed my name off the list and the lady next to him handed me a ballot paper.
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“Well that’s our democratic duty done,” I said as we stepped back out into the warm summer evening. I regretted saying it; it was just one of those things that people say, and I hadn’t said it with much thought at all, which always bothers me. I think people ought to vote, you see, but I also understand and respect why people don’t. It feels like a paradox in my head. To be honest, the system’s so old-fashioned - constituency majority returns an MP, even by a single vote, and then the party with the most MPs forms the government. But it’s favoured by the same two parties who always win, so it never changes. I understand why voting for anyone else can seem a little hopeless.
Ha. That man had basically implied that I got old really quickly. Really? Rude. Perhaps I did. But change comes to us all one way or the other, doesn’t it?
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