We voted on Friday. Our polling place is in the annex of a small Methodist church four miles away. But we did early voting, because you can do that here. You can do that here for almost 10 days, something like 96 additional hours. Each county is required to put up and staff, I think, at least three early voting locations. The more populous counties, of course, have many more.
All of the early voting precincts we could use were almost equidistant, so we drove the 10 miles down to a rural fire department.
The town blocked off roads to minimize traffic for voters convenience. There is a sign out front offering you assistance in 10 languages, as required by law.
There is a row of three or four folding tables with the polling staffers doing their job. “What is your name?” and such. Lists are consulted, signatures compared. They give you an oversized hotel key card. Behind you are four voting machines, arranged in such a way that, at first, you don’t think you’ll have any privacy. When you get there, though, you realize that someone would have to come over to be awfully neighborly to see your votes.
You plug in that card, you work through the touch screen — vote, vote, vote — you verify your votes on the screen, and again on a printed receipt. You take the card back to the desk, and that is when they give you your sticker.
They also have mail-in voting here. They have drop box voting with each county again required to prominently locate three of those bins.
It’s a wonderful feeling to vote. It’s a refreshing thing to do it in a place where the state actually makes it easy for their residents, all of them, to vote. Though I do miss filling in those bubbles. And, just once, I want to vote somewhere behind a current, where you pull a lever. Touching one more touch screen doesn’t feel especially empowering, but that’s the least of it.
I’ve been telling my students for weeks about the several processes available for them to record their vote. Trying to encourage them to do so because politics, we know, are interested in them. And because, we know that they are now a part of one of the two largest voting demographics in the country. I’ve been giving them info on how to do so to cover three states, because we could easily have people from just over the border in these classes. Some of them will vote. Hopefully all who are eligible. Some of them are probably voting for the first time, and we are all tasked with being mindful of encouraging that process. It should be a powerful thing, using your voice, weighing in on the national conversation, and it’s nice to encourage people to use their voice so I’ll do it one more time.
Go vote!
