No, not the dancing part, although it looks like it would be a lot of fun, for those who can do it.
I just mean I’m still thinking about going out and voting ahead of Election Day. The turnout projections I keep hearing about keep prodding me in that direction.
Just haven’t decided yet.
Yeah, I know — there aren’t many days left.
I’ll end this with something I tweeted this morning:
One week. I woke up today with this in my head… https://t.co/k6ZOi6hFx1
— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) October 27, 2020
And I’m not even a Bob Marley fan. I don’t know where that came from — divine inspiration, perhaps — but I thought I should share it…
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I’m doing it! I’m in line!!!
Where is that? I voted at the Lexington administration annex, formally a Kroger. I thought that was the only place. Ironically, lines will probably be short on Election Day. Media outlets are suggesting 100 million early/main in votes.
B Avenue in West Columbia. I don’t know if it was even open before today. Good luck finding out about it on the website. I couldn’t find anything. But a friend received a notice via email and told me, fortunately. Of course there was no information as to whether I was allowed to vote there, or had to do it at the other place. I got on the phone and waited about half an hour and got somebody to tell me, then I went there and got in line.
OK, I just found out that this location is only open today, tomorrow and Thursday, and the person who shared the info with me got it from the West Columbia Community Center — NOT from the Election Commission.
I went to the community center’s Facebook page, and found a link to this WIS story.
So basically, if I hadn’t asked this friend — who voted last week in Lexington — for details yesterday, she probably wouldn’t have thought to tell me when she saw this.
Today, when I Googled to find out where I voted, based on where I live, it said Lexington.
So, you know, nice job getting the info out there, folks…
Who’d you vote for?
All the ones I said I would over the weekend: Joe, Jaime, Adair and Nikki Setzler…
Just being facetious. I’m still wondering about those secret Trump voters. Do they exist?
OK, I get the joke, but I didn’t think the question was that odd.
I’m always still thinking things over, which is one reason I take so long in the voting booth. A number of times in my life, I’ve actually made up my mind right there.
In an earlier comment, I described those homey booths we had in Tennessee back in the day. The very first time I voted, in Memphis in 1972, I went in completely undecided about president.
I thought McGovern was an absurd candidate who had run a terrible campaign, just one mess after another, with the business of dumping Eagleton (whom I really liked) sort of capping it off. I thought he’d be a terrible president.
I thought Nixon was far more competent in the job than McGovern would be. But I didn’t trust him at all. I really had a bad feeling about what we were going to find out from the still-unfolding Watergate story. So I didn’t see how I could vote for him, either.
As you see, even at that young age, competence and character mattered a great deal.
But I finally made up my mind, standing in the booth with the folks outside wondering if I was OK in there, on the basis of knowing that Nixon was going to win.
So I voted for McGovern, as a protest against the guy who was going to be reelected. That seemed valid to me at the time. After 2016, I think protest votes (like, “I know Hillary’s going to win but I don’t like her, so I’ll vote for Trump) are insanely irresponsible. But then, it made sense to me.
But I digress.
When I wrote that post over the weekend (actually, finished it — I had written much of it months earlier, but got bogged down in it, which happens), I was still arguing with myself about voting for Micah even though he didn’t have opposition, and maybe voting for a school board member a friend and neighbor had recommended to me.
But no, I stuck to my resolve to just vote for the four Democrats in contested races — and to my rule against voting for people I wasn’t sure about. And I really knew nothing about those school board candidates…
Actually, I did that protest vote for president one other time — in 1996, with Clinton playing the Nixon role and Bob Dole as McGovern.
Clinton was competent but I didn’t trust him. Dole had run a horrendous campaign, coming across as someone who’d be lost as president.
Polls convinced me Dole didn’t have a chance, so I voted for him as protest.
I had outgrown that by 2016. Over the years that Cindi was on the editorial board, she convinced me not to ever do that — try to be tricky or strategic — in the positions we took. NEVER advocate something happening unless you really want THAT thing to happen. (I actually can’t think of any examples; in fact I can’t even imagine ever being deceptive in an editorial position. But backhanded approaches came up a couple of times in discussions of alternatives for dealing with difficult, no-win issues, and I thought her arguments were good enough that they influenced me beyond the subject at hand).
And I had decided to never vote for anybody I didn’t really, really want to win…
I voted absentee in person, a tortured way to avoid calling it early voting, yesterday. I wanted to avoid the possibility that my vote wouldn’t be counted. Signature matching on mail in ballots can refer to more than handwriting. Judge Gergel’s ruling today proves that I wasn’t being unduly paranoid.
Good for you.
In the end, two things caused me to do this.
First, I didn’t feel great when I went to bed last night. Probably just weariness from staying up half the night before, for the pleasure of the West Coast, watching the World Series. But I thought, “What if this is COVID? What if I get sick and can’t vote?”
Second, I just keep hearing that this huge early turnout could, instead of taking the pressure off Election Day, be a harbinger of a complete mess on that day.
Oh, and a third thing: When I found out about this satellite location — and found out about it in a way that made me hope not many people would know about it — I decided to run out and do it, suddenly and without warning.
Took about an hour.
Just had a story showing the line where you voted. The reporter said the wait was about 90 minutes. Seems like the voter turnout is far greater than ever. 137 million voted in 16. I bet we go over 160 million. That SHOULD be a good harbinger for the Dems.
The story was on WIS TV.