Voted a Week Early

My Zoom class concluded several minutes before its scheduled 2PM end.  In late October, the day's weather allowed comfort with a long sleeved shirt but no jacket.  It seemed like the right time to vote, exactly one week in advance of the formal Election Day.

My state permits early voting up to ten days in advance.  Each county has at least one location.  Mine has several, though a pittance of the number of polling sites that the state will monitor on Election Day.  Each early voting site must agree to remain open all ten days except Sunday at all specified hours.  Very few communal agencies can make that commitment.  As a result, lines become long.  The day before, I had driven past the site.  Parking in the center's lot was unrealistic.  No spaces appeared open along the sidewalks of the street on which the location stood, though I didn't sample the cross streets.  An elementary school sits next door, one that would be letting its students out while I waited my turn.   I opted to return later in the week.  This time I anticipated that I would have to park a block or two away, finding a side residential street with its own median and legal parking in front of a modest suburban house.

After locking my car, I crossed the street at an intersection with crosswalks but no traffic lights or stop sign.  Gaps in traffic and inability to drive very fast along a road that a lot of motorists occupied as they sought their chance to vote assured my safety.

No ambiguity to where this site was or what it was for.  Campaign signs for every candidate on the ballot enticed the undecided.  I was not undecided.  The community center has a small frontage.  Beyond it stands a handsome brick school, now vacant but with its sign still legible in cursive over its front door.  To the left facing that door, visitors could read the cornerstone:  MCMXXIV.  The building's centenary.  It had one fluorescent light visible in an upper-floor window.  Several windows had air conditioning units protruding to the outside.  Its purpose or its occupancy was not readily deduced by the many voters who entered the queue, which extended to the side of the building opposite the cornerstone.  It appeared about the same length as the one I had driven past the day before.  But parking space established and no competing obligations the rest of the afternoon, I affirmed that I would not be deterred from expressing my electoral preferences by any hint of impatience.

I latched myself onto the line's rear, behind a lady who kept to herself the whole time.  Two couples, likely contemporaries of mine, entered the line behind me.  Our conversations, which would last the entire time it took to reach the voting booth, began with me trying to set my smartwatch's stopwatch.  Its black screen reflected the afternoon's direct sunshine.  I could not see it, though I knew how to enter clock mode blindly.  I could not enter stopwatch mode.  Instead, I noted the time:  2:17 PM.  While I had to stroll the width of the abandoned school with other voters filling that distance, I took little assessment of who the other voters were.  I know the catchment area of that center.  Mostly suburbanites like myself and the other two couples.  The district has its demographic diversity.  The Center itself offers community based programs to a population less well-off than me.  Wage earners in retail, security, civil service, healthcare.  People of African, Hispanic, and Asian ancestry live nearby, while those with advanced university degrees who work as professionals in large corporations live a few miles away, mostly to the west.  The two couples behind me fit that description.  We quipped about kids, schools, and other places we had lived.  They were each business people who sold or merged with larger entities.  One handed over the keys to a private equity firm after having built the business over decades from start-up to 400 employees.  Not different from my tale of finding solo medical practice unable to compete with larger institutions, forcing me to seek and accept employment at one.  They wanted to be near their kids.  I wanted to be a healthy distance from mine, just as I preferred settling in a place where it was easier for me to visit my parents and in-laws than for them to visit me.  

The line plodded forward.  Periodically, an official from the state Elections Department would venture along the line, asking us if anyone needed to sit down due to frailty.  None of us took her up on the offer.  Slowly we got close enough to read the carved concrete above the front door with the center's name, then onto a small front concrete patio leading to the glass front doors with benches for those who needed rest on the side.  Not long after, our turns arrived.  The identity station had three workers for four polling booths.  The usher pointed me to a most personable official in the middle.  She took my drivers license, had me sign an electronic form on a screen, then announced my name as the next voter, as she handed me a paper with a list of contested offices that I would need to insert into a window once at the voting screen.  The booth monitor held the black privacy curtain at booth #3, which I entered. Paper inserted, error response, re-inserted, followed by a screen with each candidate for each office.  Democrats listed vertically in the left column, Republican list just to the right of that.  All offices but one were contested.  And farther to the right of the screen appeared isolated names of independent candidates or fringe parties.  Irrespective of their worthiness, their placement on the election screen disadvantaged them.  This time I voted straight party.  Touch each name in the column, watching the box with my candidates' names transform from white to traffic light green.  It questioned me a few times if I wanted to review my selections.  Confident that I voted for the best people from President at the top to County Council President at the bottom, I asked the machine to give me the confirm vote option.  Another electronic box to touch, this in a somewhat lighter shade of green.  I pressed that box with my index finger, so at least one list of hopefuls could rest assured that each of them at least appealed to somebody.

As I exited the curtain, I encountered a table with I Voted stickers.  I peeled one off, adhered it to my forehead, confirmed my watch time as 3:25PM.  The line took about an hour and ten minutes.  And my new acquaintances told me about an attractive restaurant right near my home that I had never visited.  Checked out their web site when I arrived home.  As expected, school would be letting out just as I exited the voting location.  Having parked about two blocks away, I strolled to the intersection where the school crossing guard with neon yellow vest stopped the traffic to allow me to the other side of the street.  While I did not really know the way home from that side street, I drove along its length.  It intersected with a main road.  From there I knew the best route to my house.

The designated Election Day will arrive.  My house sits about a twenty-minute walk or three-minute drive from the border with a swing state.  Media, particularly TV, originates in the megacity on that side of the border, putting me in the unwelcome advertising cross-fire.  My old HS friends reacquainted on FB some fifteen years ago.  In the end, we vote the same way, though their postings of their preferences always make me wonder whether we derived the same level of analytical skills from the classes we shared.  I've minimized my time there as a result.  And that's before we even get to paid candidate advertising, most highly dependent on innuendo of some type.  And I no longer even sign on to Twitter, as much as I have made an effort to follow mostly reputable journalists.  With my ballot submitted, I become immune to external influences.  Not the ads. Not the signs stuck into the lawn sod outside the polling place I just visited.  I'm done.  Polls with posted results showing who you favor always ahead on YouTube.  No bandwagon for me to jump aboard.  Just tune in again when the real public preferences counted and reported.

Voter Misgiving

Real Vote.  First one of the election season.  A primary.  Other than school board elections, my state only votes for anything on even numbered years.  My county has a dominant party, at least where the population clusters, so the primary determines who will hold office in my own districts, statewide, and in Washington.

Open seats this round.  A lot of them.  Term limits give us a new Governor.  There's a certain musical chairs to vacancies with our Lt Governor wanting to be Governor, Congressman wanting to be Senator, term limited County Executive wanting statewide office, state senators wanting statewide office.  Then their slots need to be filled. My state rep decided he was in over his head.  No shortage of people wanting his place.  New County Executive.  President of County Council wants to serve as County Executive, so her position becomes vacant.  It was a long ballot, though not an onerous one.

As a voter, I have become different.  The October 7 attacks by Hamas happened over there.  The responses of different American constituencies happened over here.  Some of the alliances made me very uneasy.  I voted Jewish.  I met or knew all the Jewish candidates.  The Governor wannabe was the most capable.  The other two I trusted.

Fundamentally, people have two generally valid ways to select representatives.  One is whose proposed agenda matches my preferences, the other is who would I hire.  My inclination has been to go the latter route.  I know that no candidate is a clone of mine.  During a term of office, events of various types will arise.  The person who can handle the twists and turns succeeds better than the rigid ideologue.  There are exclusions.  Fists in the air with river to the sea is an exclusion.  Not that I fear the outcome, but I can anticipate other policy branch points.

After due diligence, I came to the poll with a single remaining dilemma.  One candidate, the favorite, had proven herself a capable state legislator with a personally progressive agenda.  She would set it aside to secure majorities for legislation that she sponsored or that others sponsored but she found merit.  No question of her competence as a crafter of law.  That's fine for the senate of a small state, one of about two dozen people.  It may be very different as an at-large representative in a body of 435 much more diverse individuals and regional interests.  Her very real skill at creating alliances may be overwhelmed.  I can see her posing with The Squad, voting with that group, people who I would evict from my party were it practical to go that route.  As I tapped the icon on the screen, I sure wished that the man who opted for the state capital instead of Capitol Hill, a person highly capable and in alignment with my mind, would have selected a DC career instead.  Alas, he has a physician wife, newborn son, young step children and preference as an executive rather than one of a large body of people.  He got my vote for Governor.  The capable state senator got my vote for US Rep, though with great misgivings.

The tally will not happen for a few more days.  Then a general election, where surprises are few.  At least for this particular office, we can have a do-over in two years.

Post-Election Assessment

My Democratic Representative District Committee had its post-election meeting.  The sponsored candidates all prevailed.  No discussion of vulnerabilities or things our district can do to improve the fortunes of neighboring districts, though we have two years for that.

Most of the discussion involved the process of voting.  The state's elections staff underestimated the attraction of early voting.  Much like the Sooners rushed before Oklahoma formally opened, we had a big line waiting to get in, though we had more decorum than those settlers.  The location kept most of us queued outside the front door.  The people of European ancestry were almost exclusively an older group, those of color a bit younger, with a brisk mid-day mostly tolerable.  Had it been colder or serious precipitation, there were no reasonable provisions for those most eager to vote that day.  The Community Center seems a big place that could manage that type of attendance better.  One Election Day venue included a Nursing Home where voters were screened for Covid risk.  Nobody knows if the brow thermometer denied anyone with a borderline, or even high temperature their rightful franchise.

Machines malfunctioned.  Response of Republicans, fire election officials.  Response of Democrats, investigate and correct the snafus.  There are party differences in real issues.  But there are party differences in how people are treated and misadventures are remedied.  I'm a Democrat.

My Fellow Lost

 One of the pleasures of living in a small state has been meeting virtually all of my elected officials at one time or another, making conversation, telling what I think, and having them respond personally.  With a little luck, this may even include the next President.  The number of active dislikes approaches zero.  We elect decent people who represent a lot of views.  While everyone has been personable, not everyone has been capable.

I latched onto a contemporary last cycle, a man of significant accomplishment and expertise in health care.  We probably crossed paths, he as a senior hospital executive at a place I visited almost daily, but I did not get to know him until he ran for office.  He squeaked by in a multicandidate primary and since we really only have a Democratic Party in my district, and now largely in my state, he took his place in the legislature.

Since we share an expertise in health care, his on the financial end, me on the what happens to the patient end, our correspondence evolved, particularly in trying to address a devastating effect of opioids around our state.  We discussed this coffee and via email a few times.  My new friend also had prior experience as a community representative.  This enabled him to engage in some very direct constituent concerns from traffic lights to flooding or other safety hazards in individual developments.  

Covid-19 changed some of the personal contact.  Constituent coffee hours at the Brew HaHa on his tab ended.  Public gatherings where he could show up and mingle became fewer.  And despite his expertise in some aspects of health care, he never took much initiative on making our Covid lives easier, as these were more executive tasks of the state and county than legislative ones.

As a senior health executive, his strength was as a technocrat, something I greatly admire as a clinical maven myself.  When confronted with a choice of taking $100 now or risking it to get $200, he would go for the sure thing, which is what I think legislators should do, though executives maybe not.  His undoing may have been in his own area of expertise.  His principal legislative initiative was to have the state fund Obamacare expansion by reducing the risk to the carriers that were hesitant to enter this market.  Once the deal with state money became attractive to the insurers, they expanded availability, not massively, though importantly to the 21K citizens who benefited.  I happen to agree that those citizens who went from nothing to something benefited more than the insurers who went from having a lot to having an additional increment, though the sum expended could have been redeployed for projects that were less certain but would benefit more people.

The fellow who lost to my friend by less than 100 votes two years ago renewed his challenge, with the legislation as his issue.  I assumed, incorrectly as it happened, that people including me do not really understand the technicalities of this key legislation that requires some real expertise to assemble.  Moreover, prior to social isolation my representative had done direct constituent intervention capably.  I assumed the primary would not pose a major political challenge.

I met the opponent briefly but did not discuss issues.  He had volunteered at a Covid event.  Seemed like a nice fellow.  I wished him well as I handed him my diagnostic swab and drove off.

The election returns from the primaries had a theme.  Quite a lot of challengers prevailed and even the sure things had a quarter of the party voters opposing what I thought were popular and capable incumbents.  My friend got voted out by the man who handled my Covid specimen.  The mail in ballots totalled pretty even, but the get out to the polls turned out rather lopsided.

As I ran an errand to Shop-Rite, I turned a major intersection crammed with political signs, some now effective publicity, others visual clutter once ballots for the general election was established.  My friend's poster was the largest of the corner, anchored by two stakes.  There he was in plaid shirt, windbreaker and cap with a drill or electric screwdriver, the first to remove a sign from that corner.  Being a Senior VP at a mega institution must invite its own share of failures, not getting your way with the CEO, departure of key subordinates, or initiatives that looked great until implemented but were soon abandoned.  His stay in our legislature was only two years, but to me it seemed a very successful two years.  He did a lot for our community before and I don't expect that to end now.

Election Day

When I started, I had intended a forum for irritated physicians and synagogue members, of which there is no shortage.  I have been ambivalent about whether the intent was to act or to vent.  Polling suggests that dissatisfaction with our social environment extends to many parts of our grand experience.  The voters today, and increasingly by absentee the last few weeks, intend to act.