Nevertheless, every election day holds the same glow of purpose and same self-affirming notion that I'm going to do something decidedly good and important that day. I always wake up in a great mood. I ride that contented wave until it's the appointed time to actually cast my ballot. I listen to the news and always hope for big turnouts. I enjoy driving up to our election central (the volunteer fire dept house) and seeing which candidates' signs are most in evidence. I love smiling and saying "hi" to the fellow voters and thanking the poll workers. I like chitchatting about turnout and the weather, but never jarring the moment or the sanctity of voting privacy with even the smallest talk of overt politics.
I must admit that the touch screen ballots don't give quite the sense satisfaction or drama that the old, hulking mechanical voting booths did. I miss drawing back the curtain, flipping the little levers of your choice and hearing that heavy kerchunk signifying that your votes had registered when you pulled the big center handle that pops open the curtain.
Most of all, I love those little "I Voted" stickers that you're handed as physical evidence you did your democratic duty. We always keep them on the dash of our pickup truck; here's part of our current collection:
We never remove them, just leave them on the little ledge under the radio until the next election comes around and we paste the older ones down with a new sticker or until they lose their stick-to-it-ness and flutter down to the floorboards.
In the last dozen years, if I listened to the more rational part of my brain, I would have had little reason to rejoice on election day. After growing up in a fiercely leftist town in Maryland (it recently voted to impeach Bush/Cheney ) and living many adult decades in the solidly Democratic DC burbs of Arlington and Falls Church, my significant other and I moved to a VERY rural, very RED part of Virginia.
How rural you ask?
Here's the road in front of our house:
And here's the approach to our urban center:
A few more yards and you're in the heart of our oh-so-cosmopolitan town:
And how RED is my little part of the Commonwealth? Well,
as the next picture taken on the way to our voting place shows, we're actually better described as REDNECK, not just RED:
(And by the way, that Stars and Bars is sitting in front of the Habitat for Humanity house our community built).
And here's our election center around noon today --- not a candidate sign or candidate worker in sight.
Signs are allowed; we donated our Jim Webb yard sign in 2006 just so there would be one Webb placard amid the sea of Macaca, I mean, George Allen signs.
We have 435 registered voters in our precinct. About 96 percent are registered Republicans. In the time we have lived here, the precinct in Presidential elections went overwhelmingly for Dole, then Bush (both times). Huckabee stands a good chance of taking our precinct tonight and certainly McCain will rack up a BIG win in November in my little corner of the world. At noon, the precinct had recorded 37 Republican ballots and 29 Democratic ballots (that's including our two votes).
I love my little corner of the world and I even like and/or respect most of my neighbors (with a few exceptions like the occupants of that house with the Confederate flag). I have no intention of moving and therefore, for the rest of my life, I am painfully aware that I probably won't ever be voting with the majority in this district.
Nevertheless, we post the sign of our candidate in our yard where it will be viewed by more squirrels, deer and racoons than humans at a rate of about 100 to 1:
And we take a break from work, put on our candidate slogan t-shirts and get in our candidate be-stickered truck to cast our vote:
It may seem futile to some, or silly to others, but as for me:
I hope that election day will always find me feeling as I do today -- happy, purposeful and very proud to complete this smallest, but most fulfilling civic duty.
Go Hope-Mongers!
(cross-posted at DKos)