Yesterday morning, Your Humble Blogger happened to pass by Town Hall, which is not altogether surprising, as it is a small town, when it comes to that, and the Town Hall is next to the library, the post office, the police station, the fire department, and all the other municipal offices, is besides not a million miles from, well, anything else I’m likely to do in town. Anyway, a small sign out front of the building alerted me that there was Voting going on inside. Hmmm, thought I, there must be an election coming up, and they allow advance voting at the town hall. I’ll need to keep an eye out for what that’s about. A trifle later I saw someone with a Proud to Vote sticker, and it occurred to me that it was, after all, a Tuesday, and perhaps it was election day today.
I think I’ve mentioned before that whilst in my current locality, I’m not taking a local newspaper. In fact, I’m paying very little attention to local politics. I occasionally check the on-line sites of the local papers, but I have kept the visitor mentality enough to let my eyes glide past state politics as being, well, not my business. I not only don’t watch local news on television, but I haven’t watched broadcast television at all recently, so any television ads haven’t come to my attention. And although I do listen to news on the radio, our local NPR station devotes only the smallest amount of time to local news, at least at times when I happen to be listening. It’s true that they cover local politics during the noontime call-in show, but as I don’t really like the host of that show, I don’t make an effort to listen, and sometimes turn the dial to the Hall of Fame Hits of the Fifties and Sixties on WFOS.
So in the absence of any direct mail, its not altogether surprising that I would lose track of things and not realize that an election was coming. When, after dinner, I remembered to check, I discovered that it was the primary election for the races for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General. Well, and the Democrats have only one candidate for Governor and for Attorney General, so the only thing on the D ballot was Lieutenant Governor. Still, it’s an election, and Your Humble Blogger sure likes to vote.
So. About six-fifteen or so, and I find out that the polls close at seven. I have the four names on the ballot, and I know nothing about them whatsoever. Ah, the internet.
It’s pretty easy, in about twenty minutes, to identify them by stereotype. One was an old-fashioned party hack, a liberal woman who had held a ton of offices of various levels, based in the north (DC) area. One was a young (male) centrist. One was the rural candidate. One was a Richmond-based progressive, a black woman with a fair amount of experience, and an emphasis on the urban centers outside the DC area. That narrowed it down, for me, to the party hack and the urban progressive. Good enough, I thought, I’ll decide in the booth.
My Best Reader and I manage to get the Perfect Non-Reader into the car quickly, and as traffic is light, manage to make it to the polling place at about six-fifty-five; they are folding up the voting booths but have left one for stragglers like ourselves. They seem pleased to see us; we bring it up to around forty Democrats and eighty Republicans for our polling place. In our county, around 3,370 people voted, mostly on the R ballot, out of 38,000 registered voters. In the state, around 300,000 people voted, out of almost four and a half million registered. That’s right: turnout was around eight percent.
I admit that I didn’t find the act of voting as moving as I usually do. Honestly, I don’t particularly care who our nominee for Lieutenant Governor is. Honestly, I don’t care who the Lieutenant Governor is; it’s a ceremonial position, and unlike the Commonwealth in which I formerly resided, it’s usual for a Governor here to actually serve the term for which he is elected. And, of course, I’m leaving the state before the general election. And, of course, after I cast my vote for the progressive from Richmond, the party hack from the north won. So it’s not like I am furious at those four million “voters” who didn’t show up. Still, I took my place as a member, however temporary, of the community. I stood up, and I was counted. Just in time, too.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.