Did you make it? Did you go to the polls to vote? I wish I’d been there to join you if you did, but that privilege has been taken away from me by the County. Now I have to vote by mail, as many of you do. For some people, this is a privilege they choose over taking time from Tuesday. I miss going to the polls, however.
Rita Woodard, our
Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector/Registrar of Voters since 2007, says
she’s only responding to State law when her office determines who votes by
mail. I’ll accept that. During the 2012 election, the first one I discovered
that I’d been relegated to this category (as did hundreds of other Lindsay
voters, with much chaos ensuing,) she informed me that voting by mail increases
voter turnout. I think it’s possible
that voluntary vote-by-mail balloting does increase voter turnout. I think it’s also possible that the
involuntary sort might actually be responsible for some of these low voter
turnout numbers the media has been flashing in our faces this year.
Did you notice when yours came in
the mail last month? Did you fill it out
right away and send it in? Or did you
want to wait until you’d heard the last-minute appeals from candidates to make
up your mind? Because if you decided to
wait and take your ballot to the polls (like it says you can in the
instructions,) your ballot will not be counted until after the regular ballots
are all tallied, weeks after the results have been announced.
Did you sign it in the right spot on
the envelope? Did you use the same
signature that you have on file at the Registrar of Voters office? Have you checked the website to see whether
or not your ballot was counted? I hope
that my signature still resembles the one I filed in 1993,but I haven’t yet
checked to see whether the person who examined my envelope thought it does. All of which is to say that I voted, but
don’t yet know whether it counted or not.
So let me just state outright that I
think there’s a lot more room for uncertainty in this shift from going to the
polls to voting by mail, and it makes me uncomfortable. That’s one reason that I miss going to the
polls.
The other reason is the loss of
sense of my membership in community, both locally and countrywide. There’s just something about standing in line
with my neighbors that dignifies the act of voting and solidifies my sense of residence
here. There’s something about standing
at the little portable booths they set up in the Veterans Memorial Building
that reminds me it’s a solemn duty of citizenship in the United States of
America and that I have that important right.
That sense of participation is honored when I pass by the names on the
building’s entrance of people who have died in multiple wars defending that
right. At least I voted.
And I voted early for a change, not
wanting to risk my chance to be counted.
After dropping my ballot in the mail, I attended rallies for the two
Democratic candidates for President, and might have changed my mind if it
weren’t too late to do so. That’s the
third reason I miss going to the polls.
Reform of the voting system is heavy
on the hearts and minds of our national leaders at the moment. I hope that won’t include not going to the
polls. I wish there were some way to
address my concerns at the local level, however. Anybody else miss going to the polls?
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Trudy
Wischemann is an agrarian advocate who writes.
Thanks to Bob Welch in Exeter for his comments this week. You can send your
nostalgic voting memories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a
comment below. 
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