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Margaret Pilarski

editorial assistant

i'm a feminist, and if you're reading this then you are too, you just might not know it yet. i like to eat cheese and travel, but i'm usually broke and/or spending my money on shoes and cocktail rings. i love dogs, rain, and driving offensively (and putting the last comma in a listed series). i'm se...

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gerrymander: v.; to be a pooface

so. today is voting day. i love to vote, i really do. when i first voted at 18 i wrote an article about it for the newspaper i interned at. it was about my fear of hanging chads and id checks. no one my age knew what a hanging chad was. it was 2002, i guess they had been asleep for the last two years...

anywho, today is voting day and the one person i knew i was voting for was linda ketner, candidate extraordinaire. she’s smart and innovative, hilarious and energetic. i’ve been driving around town with her sticker on my bumper just below hillary’s. (some may think i had been suggesting linda as hillary’s vp – this is not an altogether bad idea, in fact i think i may be on to something... clinton/ketner 2016?)

so this morning, while i was getting ready for work, the boyf went to vote since he won’t be able to later today. he came back to report that linda wasn’t on the ballot. i stared at him quizzically for a minute and then brushed it off, figuring his dual citizenship rendered him inept at correctly reading an american ballot. i probably even snort-laughed at him.

i didn’t think of it again today until i began doing my final pre-voting candidate research...turns out, thanks to some poofaced politician, i can’t even vote for her! sc congressional district 1 is blocks, just BLOCKS (!!!) away from my house.

here is the entire district:

the pink – basically all of coastal south carolina and “charleston” is district 1. so, obviously, since i live on the coast in charleston, i had always thought – duh – i live in district 1.

upon closer inspection, it appears that someone has whacked off a big chunk of charleston’s eligible voters, hmmmm, right where the income begins to drop. that red dot? that’s me.

BLOCKS AWAY! i mean that red area stops on spring street. friggin spring street. all through college i lived in that red area. we work in the red area. everyone else in this office (save for sabrina and kelly, who also live in my ‘hood) lives in the red area!!!

anywho, i am pissed. thank you coach mullinax from high school for teaching me about gerrymandering. i have now encountered the necessary use of such a bizarre word. and, the literal impracticality of the action. jerks.

so now, when i pull up to the precinct in my linda ketner-stickered car, i will feel like a deflated idiot. hurrah! i guess i should stop snort-laughing at the boyf after all...