Did you vote?

- My first vote turned into a rather hilarious moment for the booth officers. Anyways, it didn’t take me more than a second to press the button on the EVM- in fact I didnt even see the EVM properly- I saw the symbol, verified the name and pressed the button. The already amused booth officers went ‘he’s a man in a hurry. let him go‘. Only after coming out of the booth, did I realize that I had left the voter ID on the table. I went back in and they had another reason to laugh.

- A week before elections, I had made up my mind to vote for the candidate and not the party. But even on the day of the elections, I didn’t know who were the candidates in my constituency. Thats because no party campaigned in my area. Just like us, even the parties were confused as to which constituency our area actually belonged to. And so nobody took a chance and that meant we were almost ignorant of our candidates. So, I decided to vote for the party totally ignorant of who the candidate was, what his agenda was and even how he looked!

- It was disappointing to know that only 44% of registered voters in Bangalore went out and had their say in the elections. And I am sure that out of those 44%, most were first time voters like me. What the hell were the others doing? And its even more disappointing to know that ‘the others’ mostly belong to the so-called educated class. The next time you see anybody going up in arms about any public problem or expressing ‘this government is useless‘, ask him if he had cast his vote. If ‘no’ is his answer, call me too, lets kick his ass together.

- The exit polls (though I am for banning them in phased polls) hinted at a hung assembly again. Though these are still early times to speculate on final results, the results of the exit polls looks like our worst fears are all set to come true. Again.

- If you are a voter staying in a region going to polls in phase 2 or 3, you have an opportunity to ensure that we don’t submit ourselves to coalition politics again. Go out and vote.