voting late, but often

Yesterday was election day.

If you just checked your calendar to see if you somehow missed the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, you need not to have looked. It was election day only for me.

When it comes to elections, I am a bit of a fuddy-duddy. I loved the thrill of getting up early on election day to walk down to the local grade school where I could meet my neighbors volunteering their time as guardians of the ballot box.

There was always at least one neighbor there I had not seen in months. We would catch up on what was happening on Summer and D Streets. Usually, politics never reared its warty head. Even though that was why we were all there.

In truth, I would be happy if we all met under an oak tree in the archives park to vote with raised hands. My New England blood has not been over-diluted.

All of that changed in 1998 with one of those pesky citizen-initiated ballot measures. It was sponsored and supported by the usual suspects -- and it passed overwhelmingly. From that point on, all of Oregon's elections were conducted solely by mail.

This is another of those issues where opponents were derided for the "slippery slope" argument. Voting by mail had a pilot run as a hybrid system for local elections starting in 1981. The opponents then said it would not be long until polling places were closed. Their opponents laughed at them.

For all of my snarky tone in those last two paragraphs, I was a vote-by-mail advocate. I suspect because I had grown accustomed to voting by absentee ballot during my active duty stint in the Air Force. It did not seem the least bit exotic to me. In fact, it had a soupçon of frisson to my youthful optimism.
When I moved to Mexico, I did not abandon my civic duty as a citizen of the sovereign state of Nevada. Upon application, the clerk of Washoe County has provided me with a ballot every two years at election time. This year, it arrived in the midst of a political firestorm in Washington earlier this month.

I am one of those veteran voters who has never missed an election. For me, it is a privilege to vote -- whether or not I get to participate in the social side of election day.

But, this year, for a variety of reasons, I had decided to sit out the election. I had not slipped into the same dispirited mood as George Will, but I was close.

Then, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings happened. Polls had indicated that Democrat voters were highly motivated to vote ever since President Trump was elected. The Kavanaugh nomination brought all of that angst back to the surface.

But what happened in Washington did something I would never have predicted. It made Republican voters just as angry and motivated them to not sit out this election. Some polls show Republicans are now more likely to vote than Democrats.

Anger is a terrible reason for voting. At least, for me. Some people feel very comfortable allowing their emotions to rule their lives. I am not one of them. Anger almost always leads me to do something I would never logically contemplate.

The immediate practical effect happened in this year's Senate elections. Before the Kavanaugh hearings, most polls showed the Democrats picking up a net gain of at least one Senate seat. Perhaps, two or three. After the hearings, the polls show the Republicans picking up a net gain of two seats.

The shift happened over one weekend, and the polls have not changed since then.

For over a year, the same polls have shown the likelihood of the Democrats taking control of the house. The Economist has been predicting a 12-seat margin.

Before the hearings, the Democrats had a 17-seat lead in the polls. Within days, the lead started diminishing. This morning there is a 6-seat difference. But there are still 31 seats listed as toss-ups. That is extremely unusual with just 11 days left for campaigning.

Almost everyone is now predicting the Republicans will increase their majority in the Senate and the Democrats will control the House by a narrow margin. But there are still a lot of seats in play. And I decided to be one of the players.

If I still lived in Oregon, my vote (along with every other vote) would hardly matter. In each contested race, the Democrat candidate is far ahead in the polls. If you vote Democrat, kt does not matter. If you vote Republican, it does not matter.

Not so in my current state. Nevada has races for the Senate, House, and governor that are very close, and have shifted back and forth. The Republican candidates for the Senate and Governor appear to have benefited from the Kavanaugh bounce. Despite my feelings, anger does seem to motivate other voters.

But what motivated me to vote this year was a Rasmussen poll that was issued just after the hearings. The headline was: "As Election Nears, Faith in Congress is Up." Considering the historic public opinion of Congress, I thought that was a refreshingly novel approach.

The support numbers are not overwhelming. Just 24% believe Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Faint praise though it is, it is almost laudatory from this summer's rating of 15%. And that number has recently visited single digits.

Even more encouraging, 51% of Americans now believe elections are fair to voters, with only 33% believing they are unfair. That may not sound like a resounding endorsement until we look at what voters felt about elections in early 2016. Only 41% felt elections were fair; more voters believed elections were unfair. And that was before the 2016 presidential election.

If my fellow voters (and my Nevada countrymen) can be that optimistic, there is no way I was going to let my ballot go uncast.

However, good intentions are sometimes foiled by technology.

The Nevada ballot is huge. Well, at least, long.

Two ballots. Front of back. For every imaginable office. Senator. Congressman. Governor. A slew of legislative, judicial, and state-wide offices. City offices for Reno. Water districts, and a list of initiatives -- including excluding feminine hygiene products from the sales tax.

I spent an afternoon reading up on ballot measures and candidates. And then voted by filling in the appropriate bubble for each position.

That was the easy part. I had almost forgotten last year that getting my ballot back to Washoe County on time presented some problems.

Because Nevada is a progressive (in the common usage of that term, rather than the adulterated form used by political activists) state when it comes to elections, I had several options of returning my ballot.

Mailing it was risky. I love the Mexican mail system. But it can be painfully slow at times. And I did not want to risk having my ballot arrive late.

But Nevada offers two other seductive options. I could either fax it or I could attach it to an email. That sounded great.

Then I remembered I tried doing that last year. Both options require scanning my ballots. No problem. I have scanners.

When I put the ballot on my flat-bed scanner, it was far too long. My scanner is 8.5 X 11. The ballot was easily 20 inches long.

So, I tried my portable scanner that allows documents to be fed through. Only part of the ballot would scan. I discovered why when I tried modifying the custom setting. The maximum length is 14 inches -- for legal-size documents.

But, I was not about to quit. My telephone has a nifty scanning application. I have used it to deposit checks in my bank account and to copy insurance documents for reimbursement. After trying various options for an hour, I gave up. The ballots were too long for that scanner, as well.

Two years ago, I took my ballot to a local paper store because a friend told me the store had a large-bed scanner. It turned out "large-bed" was 14 inches. So, I did not even bother this year.

That left one option. I could vote at my local polling place in Manzanillo. At least, that is what I called it yesterday. You might call it DHL.

Usually, DHL is just a delivery service for Amazon orders to my house. Two years ago, I had a tax document that needed delivery to the IRS office in Sacramento within a couple of days or I would have been subject to one of those niggling interest problems (slipping a mickey to the feds). I used DHL, and the affidavit arrived just as advertised.

I gathered up my completed signed-and-sealed ballot and took it to the main DHL office. I am convinced that DHL hires its staff from a Netflix casting call. They are charismatic and good-looking. The young woman who greeted me could have been a guest star on Hecho en Mexico.

I handed her my ballot. She requested identification (as any good election clerk should). With the swipe of my credit card, she slid my ballot into a DHL envelope that is scheduled to arrive in Reno on Wednesday.

Some may argue (and some did in Oregon concerning the requirement to put a stamp on a mailed ballot) that the $712.82 (Mx)* I had to pay for the DHL service is a prohibited poll tax under the 24th Amendment.

It isn't. It is a convenience. Without it, I would be sitting in Barra de Navidad with a completed ballot and having no place to go. That is why free people extol the market.

Lenny Bruce, as he often did, summed it up well: "Communism is like one big phone company. Government control, man. And if I get too rank with that phone company, where can I go? I’ll end up like a schmuck with a dixie cup on a thread.”

Instead, I have done my civic duty. It will be up to the rest of the Nevada voters to see if we concur on the same candidates.

Either way, I will be counted amongst those who have a positive view on our electoral system. As contentious as it can be, that is what living in a democratic republic is all about.

Fortunately, I am not going to end up with just thread and a dixie cup.


* -- About $36 (US).