Finally, Sarah emerged, warning me that the scene at our voting station was confused and disorganized. Undaunted, I went in. I found at least seven fellow voters waiting at the table for our voting district, all of us sharing the unfortunate bond that our last names began with the letter “M” or beyond. That meant that only one of the two volunteers could sign us in, leaving the other to vainly call out for anyone in the A-to-L camp.

In another setting — say, a crosstown bus or a park bench — the older woman assigned to our half of the alphabet would have made a lovely companion. But speed and efficiency were not her strong suits. She kibitzed with the voters, flipped randomly back and forth through the registration sheets. She had a particularly hard time with the serrated edges of the ballot, out of concern, it seemed, for her manicure, whose status she repeatedly checked on.

It didn’t take long for these nits to test my impatience, especially when a woman talking into a Bluetooth device walked to the front and demanded a new ballot, saying the scanning machine had rejected hers. Since her name was “MacDonald,” she joined our line.

At last, my turn came. I ignored the extra minutes it took our monitor to spell my four-letter name, find my signature card in the giant registration tomb, tear off a ballot and gather the manila folders that had fallen to the floor before handing the ballot and card over to me in one of those folders.

I found an empty stand, squinted my way through the ballot, cast my votes and did my best to decide on six state constitutional amendments, including one on mining operations in the town of Lewis, Essex County, and another on competing land claims in the town of Long Lake, Hamilton County. I made my electoral choices under the harsh school gymnasium lights, anxious to finish my task and get home for dinner.