Voting - because I can!

It's local government election time here, so after work today I walked over to the polling station (the local infant school) to cast my vote. I arrived there with my voter registration card (which is just a piece of cardboard with my name and address on it), was given a rather scrappy looking ballot ballot and waved towards a booth by a custard-cream eating, bored-looking woman. After I'd marked my paper (with a last minute moment of dithering - Lib Dems or the Greens - tiny chance vs no chance?) I posted my completed ballot sheet into a disconcertingly unofficial third-world-ish looking box. The thing I found most disconcerting in the whole laid-back process was that nobody asked me for any proof of identity at any stage. Sadly, our borough is solidly conservative (41 out of 51 councillors are Tories) so my vote probably hasn't achieved much... Still, after our disenfranchised years in the US, it's good to be able to take at least some token part in the political process again.