I voted.
Well, I will vote. My ballot is ready, and at some point on this Tuesday deadline morning I will deliver it.
What can I say, I am a sucker for the sticker.
“I voted.”
I will use the voting booth available at the County Elections office, and complete my ballot. I will do as people used to do: bring my list of voting decisions and mark my ballot in place.
The polling place.
I love that phrase.
The “polling place” for most people now is the kitchen table or the living room couch. And that is as it should be. Giving people a measure of comfort, convenience and focus, as well as the opportunity to take their time, is one set of vote-by-mail benefits.
Oregon is one of three states, along with Washington and Colorado, to conduct all voting through the mail. (The fact that those are the same three states that in the years 2014-15 enacted sweeping marijuana legalization is, I am sure a matter of coincidence and certainly a topic for another column.)
We moved back to Oregon in 2000 after 10 years as Washington residents (pre-vote-by-mail), and it was at that time that Oregon switched to vote by mail. I am sure that I reacted as many people did, bothered by the change, wanting to continue the tradition of going to the polling place.
The other, greater benefits are the overall convenience and efficiency for the election workers and the tabulation process in general. The system truly works.
The term “vote by mail” is somewhat a misnomer, of course: the ballots arrive by mail, and voters have the option of returning them by mail or to hand-deliver their ballots and, in fewer numbers, go the route I am about to: go to the elections office.
Folks will show up at the counter until 7:59.59 on Nov. 8, just as they do every year.
Maybe those folks miss the old days, just as I do. This column is itself an act of nostalgia. Lorre and I used to enjoy taking our children to the polling place, to let them see democracy in action. I do not use the phrase lightly. We would enter the doors of the Grace Lutheran Church in Port Townsend, and down the long hallway the three women from the League of Women Voters would see us coming and by the time our kids had scampered up to the table, the ladies would have the ballot signature book opened to the proper page and turned around for us to sign in. They would check our ID and registration status and hand us our ballots and give us our instructions — they always gave us instructions, as if it was the first time we voted, and I loved that — and point us to the curtained booths. We would emerge from the booths and our kids would “help” us put our ballots in the box.
And we got our stickers.
A kind of enthusiasm always did come with going to the polling place. And on Monday, in an era when people of influence are telling us the system is rigged and many average people are to some extent jaded or have self-removed from the electoral act. I saw how one family’s experience is evidence that it’s still possible to be energized by the act of voting.
Folks arrived at the county building on foot, on bikes or by car, parking in the designated voting spots or walking across the street, some carefully going to the corner of 6th and State and using the crosswalk. It was a busy scene. (A postal employee arrived to collect the mail from the corner box, and several folks who had ballots converged on her with mail — but not ballots. It was too late to mail.)
Shayla Fleischer and her son, Emil, arrived at the county building, along with 20 or so other people between 5 and 5:15 p.m.
Emil hopped from the car and jumped three hops across the sidewalk. Shayla pulled out her ballot and handed it to him. Emil, 10, did the honors of putting the envelope into the slot in the wall. “He is very excited,” Shayla said. “He watched while I filled my ballot, and we talked a lot about voting and what it means. This is a special day.”
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