Today I made two very different stops and left each one with a sticker!
I don’t like to vote early if I don’t have to. I enjoy the ceremony of Election Day far too much.
For one thing, the new polling place is quintessentially charming. It’s in a proper Lutheran church basement, the sort with half-carpeted walls and brown linoleum floors that still seem to hold the smell of last Friday night’s fish fry. I enjoy the feeling of fulfilling my civic duty alongside my fellow citizens. I am particularly fond of the volunteers, who are invariably enthusiastic to a degree normally reserved for people giving away cars on daytime television.
I even love the lines. They can be long, sometimes out-the-door-and-down-the-street-in-the-rain long, but the people-watching is excellent, and there’s something rather heartwarming about standing around with your neighbors waiting for your turn to participate.
Inside, the place was humming. Clipboards clacked, folding chairs scraped, ballot machines beeped, and dozens of people shuffled about in a state of highly organized confusion. Arrows made of painter’s tape directed us through a series of makeshift corrals where we verified our identities, exchanged slips of paper, collected ballots, and eventually acquired the coveted pens with which to fill in our little rectangles. Never a hanging chad here!
Ballot in hand, I found an empty seat beside a woman who lives two houses down from me. We exchanged pleasantries and settled in, our elbows approximately five inches apart, which seemed an unusually intimate arrangement considering a quarter of the room was wearing masks.
I worked my way through the ballot with care. When I turned it over and discovered an entire page devoted to judicial seats, every single one featuring an unopposed incumbent, I wondered how much time I might save if I didn’t have to fill in all those rectangles.
It turns out you don’t.
I really ought to have asked before painstakingly shading in each one with a 0.5 mm ballpoint pen that seemed to be rationing its remaining ink.
Anyway, I deposited my ballot, collected my sticker, and emerged feeling enormously pleased I’d made it before the more intense downpour.
Now for another hour of quality time on the couch, watching the midterms and pretending that repeatedly refreshing election results will somehow encourage the remaining precincts to count faster.
Going to rest this evening, grateful for the health of those held dear. And with Georgia on my mind…