gerisullivan | Voting in Wales...

...the one in Massachusetts, of course.

A campaigner for Monica Palacios-Boyce, candidate for state representative, had two Monica signs at the edge of the school property. The school gymnasium, site of the voting, was a good distance away. The sample ballot posted on the door was the same as the one I'd downloaded from the internet, so no surprises there. Good.

No lines, either; and just one person at the five ballot stations, so I had my choice of four. I was glad to see that one was at wheelchair height. The woman who checked me in lives just up the road, and "just loves the colors" I picked for the new house paint. I invited her to the housewarming party, and fondly remembered that I first met one of my old neighbors, Donna, the first time I voted there. She was still working as an election judge when I moved out 20 years later.

As I picked up the "envelope" to conceal my completed ballot, I was told "That's a privacy folder, if you want one." Apparently few people bother. Wales has a part-time police force, but one of our officers was stationed at the ballot scanner. She reminded me to put the ballot only in, not the folder, too.

No League of Women Voters "I voted" stickers here. Total time to vote, well under 5 minutes. But then there was the bake sale...

They were holding a fundraiser for the fifth graders on the far side of the gym. Some orange road-hazard cones separated the fundraiser from the voting area. The bake sale is already the best one ever according to one of the parents working the sale -- they made over $220 in the first 3.5 hours, and there was still a throughly tempting spread to choose from. I didn't notice the counter on the vote scanner, but the bake sale results suggest the Town of Wales is well on its way to good voter turnout. Well, either that, or we had a really hungry bunch of election workers this morning.

"I've got $1.24; what can I get?" I offered another quarter to the shopper asking that question, and she took me up on it and put one of the fifth graders to work adding up her purchases. No, 75 cents times two doesn't equal a dollar. Right. More practice needed, for sure. And maybe a better understanding of numbers, too.

The woman turned out to be the town librarian; the volunteer offer I'd made to the library aide a couple weeks ago had been successfully passed along, and she was glad to hear I can design notecards as well as the posters and flyers I'd suggested as things they might need that I can help them with.

I spent more time at the bake sale than at the voting booth, and was pleasantly surprised that I managed to walk away with a single piece of shortbread as an immediate snack and a small loaf of cinnamon bread to bring home. No 7-layer bars, brownies, poppyseed mini-muffins, bite-sized cheesecakes with three (count 'em, three) cherries on top, or...or....yum. It all looked so good. "We've got a lot of good cooks in this town," the librarian told me. Indeed.

If memory serves, it's the first time I've spent money inside the building I voted in. Overall, I'm utterly charmed, which feels weird since if I were part of a group discussing the idea, I'd most likely be arguing against having a fundraiser taking place at the polling place. They're mixed purposes, and I'm tightly wrapped on the subject of squeaky clean elections. There wasn't anything even sniffing of problems or discomfort here -- no one at the fundraiser was engaging in political discussion of any kind, and there was no hint of any pressure or obligation to even acknowledge the presence of the bake sale, let alone spend money at it.

My hope this election day is for record-setting voter turnout across the nation. In the "certain" states (regardless of which candidate they're certain for) as well as the swing states. I'm heartened by the reports anticipating high turnout, and the early morning lines reported by others here on LiveJournal.

I am far more jittery about the other election outcomes that I've been in the past. Part of it is the struggle between realizing that it's possible the candidate I voted for might actually win and being reluctant to get my hopes up or anything other than resigned to the knowledge that he may well lose...or, worse yet, that we may have another election decided by the Supreme Court based on dodgy election results in a close race. I have yet to vote for a winning presidential candidate, and I usually go to the polls knowing my preferred candidate might well be carrying my state, but is fairly certainly not carrying the country. It's different this year. As for the rest of my jitters, those reasons are best saved until after the election results are known, and we see how they affect the political discourse in my country, and in my social group.

I am an American. Yes, I'm getting in my car and heading directly to Canada the day after the election, but I'll be re-entering my own country a few hours or maybe a day after I leave it as I continue onward to Michigan to visit family. Regardless of who our next president turns out to be, regardless of which political party holds control in any local, state, or national setting, may all of our politicians collectively focus on the needs and responsibilities of the public service jobs they hold, and do a much better job of fulfilling them than has been the case over the last eight years.

Last summer at the Clearwater Festival, Edie Stern and I were amused by a pro-voting song by one of the musicians. I've forgotten his name, and most of the lyrics, too, but part of the chorus goes something like this:

"So VOTE,
don't you never mind the weather,
get your butt in the booth
and pull down the lever."

Thank you to all who have posted about their own voting experiences here today; I look forward to reading more about voting across the country as the day progresses. Much appreciation, too, to those around the world who are concerned about and working to support this election, both those living here, like