I received a sample primary ballot in the mail and was startled to read the following:
"Fill in the oval to the left of the name of your choice. You must blacken the oval completely, and do not make any marks outside of the oval. You do not have to vote in every race. Do not cross out or erase, or your vote may not count. If you make a mistake or a stray mark, you may ask for a new ballot."
I tried filling in the ovals at home and, no matter how careful I was, I went outside the lines. What would I do when I got to the polling place, I wondered, where I'd be twice as jittery.
Well, it was just as I feared: I filled in the first oval OK, but the second — for the mayor — ended up looking more like a Rorschach blob and the rest of my oval fill-ins had little white spaces and some small lines past the stipulated oval shape.
I turned it in anyway. To be on the safe side, I asked the young man who took my ballot about my outside-the-lines votes, and he said it would be fine, so I crossed my fingers and tried to feel confident that my votes would be counted.
Maybe a recount of the votes in Baltimore City will show how many ballots were rejected because of our mishandling of a ballpoint pen. That any would be rejected for that reason is a sad commentary on what we find important in our lives: the precision of a pen's filling in an oval vs. the vote for the person we believe can do the best job for our community.
Phyllis Gunkel, Baltimore