I went down to the office at 11:30AM. It was quiet; they only needed phone bankers and canvassers. My arthritis and sciatica won't let me pound the pavement and I'm awkward on the phone to strangers, so I opted out. I handed over the roast chicken, and headed home to make the stromboli.
I got sidetracked in the clubhouse's TV room and sat watching the Kentucky primary for an hour or so; I was joined by the office girl and her husband, and a little later by our mail carrier; we were all pro-Obama. When one of the journalists said that Oregonians were more affluent than the people of Kentucky, we yelled and laughed our heads off. In Beaverton and Florence...yeah, possibly, but in Eugene we're replacing lawns with vegetable gardens and chicken coops because it's cheaper to grow your own food than to make a trip to the grocers, and there's usually too much week at the end of the paycheck.
The office girl's husband hadn't voted yet so I offered to take it down for him. He went back to his unit, got his virtually-untouched ballot, and I started to leave the room so he could vote in privacy.
"No, I was gonna ask you for advice!"
I firmly refused. There was no way in hell I was gonna get tangled in a web like that. So I said, "Ask your wife for advice! I ain't even going there!" So he voted, gave me the sealed and signed envelope, and I took it down for him.
The office was a good deal livelier. I walked in and B.J. said, "Welcome to the Madhouse!" And it was. I said proudly, "I have a ballot and a STROMBOLI!" The honey lamb-pepper jack one I'd brought the day before was a certifiable hit and this one, mandarin orange-cinnamon-chocolate, looked to be just as popular. They had a wonderful German Chocolate cake with a sickeningly decadent layer of straight buttercream, which I had a small slice of to fortify myself.
They needed ballot box monitors, and I jumped in on that task. There were two left: Sheldon Branch Library, and Bethel Park. I took the former because I knew where it was. And so the office staff gave me a cheesy "Drop Your Ballot Here" sign to wear around my neck, loaded me with a case of water bottles to offer to people waiting in line, and a manila envelope to collect ballots in; a quick rundown from Arusha on how to do the job, and off ye go.
Another office staffer came blasting in the back door, announcing loudly that Barack was a scant 1 delegate short of a majority. "Everyone that can walk, GO OUT!" Courtney yelled, and teams scrambled. "Get that delegate!" I wasn't due to go to the ballot box until around 6:50, but here it was 6:15 and we had our marching orders.
I'll be honest, my gig at the Sheldon Branch Library box was a cream puff job. The hardest thing I had to do was lug that palette of water bottles around, and it was more like a one-person rally. Since I was pushing a particular candidate, I had to stay at least 100 feet away from the ballot box, and that was the second-hardest thing.
We had a nice, loose, steady stream of people coming up to the box with their ballots. Obama supporters saw my sign and cheered and waved and showed me their ballots, but a huge line didn't form and the ballot collection envelope remained empty, tucked in my belt.
A number of vehicles were trucks and SUVs, and a few of the latter were brand-spanking-new Lexuses. To balance, a lot of votes rode up to the box on bicycles, or on foot. A small, 3-to-5-car line would form in this direction or that, but by the time I humped the water bottles over there they'd have voted and scattered. The busiest it got was at 7:45, when a flurry of cars, bikes, pedestrians, skateboards and wheelie sneakers descended on the locus. And the library had stationed its own non-partisan monitor/assistants; the box had a slot in the back as well as the front so two people could vote at the same time.
Let me tell you something, our vote-by-mail system straight-up rocks. Sure, there's a chance that the vote could be skewed, influenced, et al, by housemates and family members, but we've only had one instance of voter fraud in ten years — statewide — and my usual response to the "election corruption" charge is, "What's Diebold, then?"
The problem with U.S. elections is that Election Day and the various state primaries aren't no-work holidays. The former is always on a Tuesday, which means people work for most of the day. Then at 5:30PM, they race down to the polls in a panic and rush hour turns from insanity to pitched bedlam. You get people who haven't studied the voter's pamphlet, people who've forgotten what/who they were going to vote for, and they arrive at the polls frazzled, and probably within eyeshot of the Morlock who tailgated or cut them off in traffic. They're hungry. The polling stations are slightly less private than a public bathroom stall.
This is a sad state of affairs. We take Independence Day off, whatever day of the week it falls on; and while Independence Day is great, this nation really boils down to Election Day, and I consider that more important. Why isn't Election Day a national holiday?
More on that later.
While I was on station, monitoring the ballot box from a distance of 107 feet, three kids from the adjacent high school stopped by and looked at my sign. One of the two boys nodded his head, the girl took out a video camera and said, "Do you mind if we take a picture of you?"
I didn't think and said generously, "Sure," but then I thought again. Too late, the camera's going. Call me gunshy, but I was thinking, "These kids might be pro-Hillary, or worse — Paulbots! I might be getting set up for a public humiliation via You Tube!" so I have to admit that I looked somewhat edgy and suspicious while the girl and her friend staged the boy walking up to me, looking at the sign and nodding. Then he looked up at me, I gave him a classic Oregonian Cold Stare back, and she turned the camera off.
I breathed. He smiled and thanked me. I said, "I thought you guys might be setting me up for a prank," and he said, "No worries, we're all Obama supporters here!" So I grinned and nodded and wished them a good day as they headed off towards Safeway. Whew! I got lucky. I won't be tempting the Teenage Prank Gods like that again, though.
I was supposed to ensure that the ballot box stayed open and accessible all the way up to 8 o'clock, and I started keeping tabs on the time around 7:10. I know, a little over-zealous, especially given the looseness of the crowd. I'm not sure how many people voted in the hour and forty minutes I was on duty; at a guess, 100 people, about one a minute. Hardly a madhouse. I called the office at 7:30 to report on the conditions: "It's pretty easy, the library has its own monitors on the box and there's no line right now." A lady in a van, with her two kids, and an Obama sticker on the rear spoiler pulled into the driveway, saw me, waved happily and tootled up to the box. On the way out, she opened the window and said, "We're gonna win this one for Barack! All the way to the White House!" I grinned back and said, "Yes We Can!"
At 7:45, as I said, things got a little crazy. A dozen cars circled and orbited as bicycles flashed in and out, taking mere seconds to let their voting voice be heard. Peds took a little longer, and people were jumping out of cars and dashing up to the box. It was all pretty happy and civil, though; no fighting at all.
I started counting down the minutes.
"Fourteen..."
Here come three cars and two bicycles in from Norkenzie.
A big silver Suburban comes in off Coburg Road.
A line of cars, of various vintages and conditions, cruise past Safeway from Cal Young Road.
"Ten minutes! Plenty of time."
A bicycle zips in. "Eight minutes!" "Thank you!"
One of the voters comes back my way. "You wouldn't like my vote."
"Of course I do. You voted! That's all that counts!" She smiled and pulled away.
The evening's numbers resounded what I observed for myself: most of the people gave me thumbs-up, waves and honks. No harassment, no hazing, only mild rudeness (the Oregonian Cold Stare).
"Three minutes!" I told a little coupe that zipped by. He nodded and waved.
At 7:59, a car and a pedestrian raced in from Coburg Road and Safeway, respectively. The pedestrian sprinted for all he was worth and the library monitors cheered him. "Hurry! Hurry!!" The elections official in his red vest (who I rather thought looked like Santa Claus) was taking the collection box out, and the pedestrian and the young blonde driver of the car got their ballots in right on the 8 o'clock button. Sigh. Time to go back downtown.
I wound up behind the elections official, in his green F-150, in traffic on Coburg. I turned off KWAX-FM and turned on NPR's election coverage. Kentucky was 100% in and Hillary swept it by 35 points. Ack. Ack. Ack. But my mood was good, and my shift had gone well; I was solidly in the confidence that Obama would take Lane County handily...
...And he did :)
The downtown office was closed, so I parked and walked two blocks up the street with a few other Obamans, heading for the after-party at the McDonald Theatre. On a whim, I grabbed my trusty Obama Broom out of the back, and strutted up Willamette Street with it. I was greeted with a rousing chorus of cheers when I walked into the theatre with it, and found a seat to watch the CNN coverage.
The Kentucky numbers were sickening. Barack won only two counties, Jefferson and Frankfurt (where Lexington is). I saw the exit poll stating that 21% of Hillary's vote citing race as the motivation; I seriously thought about boycotting the World Equestrian Games for that, until I saw Lexington voted for Obama. And practically nowhere else. Then I remembered that the state song, "Old Kentucky Home," has references to slavery in its lyrics.
But this was Eugene, we were in the McDonald Theatre, and only a block from the most Eugenian part of Eugene, Broadway & Willamette. Samba Ja would end out the evening with a performance after Barack gave his victory speech in Iowa, and the crowd was happy. We knew we'd won, and not a few of those in attendance had gone to the historic Portland rally. CNN flashed the state map on the screen, and O, Gods! The whole of Lane County, from Florence to Junction City to Sisters to Cottage Grove is a beautiful dark blue!! So are Benton, Deschutes (!), Marion, Polk and Lincoln Counties! The crowd goes wild with a screaming, thunderous, on their feet applause, and it only gets wilder when we hear the numbers: 71 - 40 Obama!!! That margin would shrink, but never double back. We won Lane County by 17,000 votes and change.
I sat next to a couple who'd been campaign-hopping, following the primary season. They were from Wisconsin — I thanked them — and today, May 20, was their wedding anniversary. They decided to spend it in Oregon. I told them that Oregon led the nation in voter turnout; Lane County led the state in voter turnout; and Eugene led the county in voter turnout. "So we lead the nation in voter turnout. You couldn't have picked a better place to celebrate!"
We got rather irritated by CNN's Clinton-fawning, and demanded that Guido change the channel to MS-NBC...until we got the overnight show there, which was even worse. CNN had a surfeit of Clinton images and references, but MS-NBC was completely stiffing Barack, and then we demanded that they switch back to CNN. In the middle of the "CNN! — CNN! —" chant, I muttered, "Never thought I'd be cheering for CNN over MS-NBC..."
They changed the channel back, and we settled in for the expected Clinton-fawning. It came, and we responded by finding conversation amongst ourselves. That went for awhile, but even I have my "that tears it" point. They turned the sound off and Samba Ja came out to play.
Again, the place went nuts! They shot confetti out of confetti cannons at the announcement that Barack had won Lane County, the balloons dropped, and everyone got up to dance. Even me, with my sciatica making my right leg sizzle from hip to heel.
They played over Barack's speech, but we'd heard it before and in truth, it was a perfectly Eugenian, exuberantly-fitting, whacky, crazy, insane, fun scene that I'm sure has no parallel in the whole of the campaign. People and children bouncing around in everything from rainbow tie-dye to black velvet, kicking and sweeping and bouncing and waving red, white and blue balloons.
That, my friends, is how we do things in the Voter Turnout Capitol of the Nation :)
Comments are closed for this post.
