By Armchair Mayor

Voting is a true mood enhancer; do it

May 9, 2017 | 11:00 AM

KAMLOOPS — If you’ve already voted by the time you read this, good for you. If you haven’t, and aren’t sure whether you’ll bother, reconsider.

It feels good to vote. There’s something about parking your car and walking into a polling station where a bunch of other people are there for the same reason you are — to do your democratic thing.

Seriously, you get a good feeling chatting with returning staff, going into a voting booth and marking your X. The process actually only takes a minute or two. The part about marking your ballot, assuming you aren’t making up your mind on the spot, takes a literal second.

Then, you get a sticker, and you can take a selfie with an “I voted” poster in the background. It’s kind of cool, and as you go about the rest of your day you wear that sticker with pride.

Whether or not your candidate of choice comes out a winner, the process wins. Do it.

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By the way, here’s a tip for those who don’t vote at their designated polling station. You don’t have to vote at the station that’s on your voting card, but the process is a little different if you go somewhere else.

Which is what I did this morning, because it was convenient to do so. When I arrived, I was directed to the absentee voting table. Handed in my voting card, showed my driver’s licence, signed in two different spots, got my ballot, marked it, turned it in.

But it doesn’t go directly into the ballot box. It is slipped into a small envelope and sealed. That envelope is, in turn, put into a larger envelope, which then goes into the ballot box.

The nice ladies at the table explained that this somewhat elaborate process is because the ballot box for absentee votes goes to the central elections office for the riding when polls close.

There, the envelopes are sorted to their various home polling stations, removed from the envelopes and counted along with others from the appropriate designated station.

I had assumed my vote would simply be counted along with others from the polling station I voted in, but nope, not so. Seems a bit of a rigmarole tearing open envelopes and hand-counting ballots, but this way the turnout and count for each polling station is accurate.

Anyway, whichever way you vote, and wherever you vote, it’s something we should all do today. After all the cynicism of a long election campaign, it’s a mood enhancer.