No taxation without representation
I’m a political junkie. Election night is like my Superbowl—Watching the results trickle in, cheering on my “team”.
Which makes it odd that, aged 30, I have only twice in my life cast a vote in a political race, and the only time I did so by visiting a voting booth was in a referendum rather than an election. (In 1997, I was a student in Edinburgh, and cast my vote by proxy for my hometown MP whose seat was more marginal.)
Shortly after moving to the US eight years ago, I attempted to get my name onto the British electoral register as an overseas voter, but due to a screw-up by the registrar in Stirling I failed. Since then I haven’t bothered trying again as the new rules for registering as an overseas voter are too much hassle (involving finding a British citizen to whom I am not related). Besides, overseas voters can only vote in General Elections, not local or Scottish ones, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much and have just resorted to trundling along as a disenfranchised soul, grumbling occasionally about taxation without representation.
But today, I was looking at the US Immigration Services site, and realised that I will be able to apply for American citizenship in January of 2008. The naturalization process reportedly takes an average of six months so, theoretically, it is possible that I will get to have a say (beyond trying to convince Joy how to vote) in the 2008 presidential election.
(As an aside, only a true child would be amused by the fact that the final page of the official Guide to Naturalization, in an appendix giving examples of the kind of sentence you might have to write in your citizenship test to prove your English-speaking abilities, includes the sentence “The colors of the fag (sic) are red, white and blue.”)
But for now, I’m sat on the sofa with a beer, refreshing CNN.com every so often and cheering as the Democrats steal seats in the Senate, and just enjoying waiting for the victory speech from our new Governor Elect, the splendid Deval Patrick.
UPDATE: And today is my extra innings. The bases are loaded, and Webb‘s at the plate. Fantastic!
