Although we have become, over time, somewhat cynical about our election process, we still value our privilege of voting.  Accordingly, we applied before we left home, for absentee ballots for this important mid term election.  Because we have often had trouble with the internet in China, we selected the option “paper ballot mailed to address given” instead of “internet ballot.”   In late September,  we received some ballots in the mail and were quite pleased.  However, when we opened them, we saw that they were for a school issue, and that the date was long past.  I contacted by e-mail the person in charge of absentee ballots, and she said that the paper ballots for the congressional election had been mailed September 15, but that we could change our preference to internet ballots if we wanted to.  I suggested we wait just a bit to see if the paper ones arrived, and I told her that beginning October 1, we were having a week of holiday in which no mail would be delivered.  October 8, everyone came back to school, and no mail for us.   The election lady was right on top of things and emailed me before I emailed her.  She sent the e-mail version of the ballots, but we could not vote by email, we had to print them out and send them in.  Good thing we brought our printer.

On Saturday morning, we printed out each ballot, keeping mine separate from Dear Husband’s, as directed.  The email included nine pages of instructions and two pages of the ballot itself.  In those nine pages were two that had to accompany the ballot.  We spent some time sorting through all this and setting the printer correctly for the ballots.  We had brought some envelopes from home so we put each ballot in an envelope and pasted the appropriate page onto the envelope.

Election lady had suggested we use Fed Ex to deliver the ballots.   I went online to find out if Fed Ex is in our city, and where?   After some frustration with the Chinese sites, I found the English site and saw the main cities listed, and ours was not among them.  However, I kept looking and found Fed EX in our city!   DH went over to school and asked our official to write out in Chinese what we had in English for an address.

We found a cab and showed the driver the address, and he agreed to go, so off we went into the gray haze of pollution, wearing our masks, clutching our envelope with the ballots.  We were in the cab a long time, but our official had said it would take at least half an hour, so we weren’t worried.  Looking out the window at all the traffic around us, I suddenly realized that the white truck ahead of us in the next lane had English letters on it, and they said, “FED EX.”  I mentioned this and Husband in the front seat pointed it out to the driver.  The driver grasped the idea and quickly pulled behind that truck and followed it to the FED EX building which is in an industrial park.  We were all delighted and the driver got out and talked with the Fed Ex driver to tell the tale while we went inside to mail the package.  It occurred to us that the FedEx truck might have been on a delivery and not going to the home base, but that was not the case.  In all our visits to China, we have never seen a Fed Ex truck on the road.

The young man in Fed Ex said he spoke “a little” English, which to our ears meant “enough.”  Still within the context, we had something to send and he was the sender so it wasn’t too difficult. We said, “FAST.”   I filled out the forms, got everything together into the mailer and paid the money, 283 rmb, which is $46.16.   The cab driver had enjoyed a break with the guys on the lot waiting for us to finish the business, realizing that we would need to go back, and that he would not likely find another fare from that place.  He started the meter again, and took us home.  Our total of the two fares was about $13.00.   Our total time to do all this was about four hours.  Today, Wednesday,  I received an e-mail from Election Lady that she had received the ballots, and that the package was sealed when she received it.  The paper ballots still have not arrived.

How about you, dear American reader?  Will you get in your car and go to the nearby election place to cast your ballot?