Arizona

The MVD does not do two pictures. Possibly the easiest voting in the country other than not having same day registration. When I lived in Phoenix and went to vote in some kind of election, I went to my usual polling place and surprise, surprise, it was somewhere else. Needless to say, there had been no notification of the change. Here, no sweating the exact polling place. How vastly better a system.

Your experiences here are nearly 40 years ago and it's a completely different state. You should check it out with an open mind. As I said before, this state has moved forward enormously. Arizona has gone backward. Not that it was that wonderful then.

Shortly after we moved to Phoenix, a mayoral election took place. It was an important election because no matter which candidate won, it would mean a change in the fundamental power structure that had been running the city since 1948. We both registered to vote, but decided to sit out the election because we felt we didn't know enough about the issues or the candidates to make an informed choice. On election day, my husband was out of town and so when we spoke I said, "Oh, by the way, Terry Goddard won the election." He said he'd tell his Phoenix co-workers who were on the same business trip with him. So when he saw them at breakfast the next morning he gave them the news. They both said, "Huh? Who? What are you talking about? What election?" At that point one of them had lived there seven years, and the other for eleven, and they were convinced that so long as they didn't have to brush snow off their cars in the middle of winter, nothing else mattered.

And that was the attitude I found over and over. No involvement in anything else. Indifference to the quality of the public schools. Not even being aware of an important mayoral election. Not even taking kids to the park on a wonderful winter day.

While I agree that brushing snow off my car in the middle of winter isn't fun (although my car lives in the garage, which is actually highly unusual here in Santa Fe) it is simply not the only thing that affects quality of life.