what can we help you find? -- apparently nothing

file this under too strange to be true:

my roommate is checking to make sure that he's registered to vote here in the district. like any computer-literate person these days, he decides that a good source for information might be an official website of some sort.

so, he checks out dc.gov, our city's award-winning portal.

right there in the menu bar across, the top, he clicks on 'RESIDENTS', figuring that might be a good place to start.

lo and behold, that brings you to a page with a search function at the top with the polite question "what can we help you find?" there in bright red letters. and, in a matter of perfect harmonic convergence, the polite question offers an example, that example being "Register to Vote".

"PERFECT!" my roommate thinks, "just what i'm looking for!"

ah, but this is DC, my friends, where nothing is ever perfect.

go ahead try it yourself. enter "register to vote" into that field and see what you get.

nothing.

a multitude of questions come to mind, but i think the first and foremost would be this: don't you think that those who created our city's award-winning website would have checked to make sure that, when creating a search function like this and offering up a concrete example, they would have checked to make sure it actually does what they promise it does?

(as a public service, if you want to figure out if your voter registration is up to date (especially if you live in anc2c, just sayin'), check out this tool on the website of the dc board of elections and ethics.)