The Epic Pencil, podcast, blog, voting, elections, Chris Watson

I learned about voting as a kid in Rhode Island. Every few years, they would wheel into our schools a massive booth with switches, a giant lever, and a grey curtain that would swish clink shut on metal bearings. An adult would stand up in front of us and explain the importance of voting to our community and our country, how the decisions we would make would determine our future. Then, we lined up and one at a time, had an opportunity to step behind the Wizard’s curtain to flip the switches for no candidates and then pull the giant lever with a solid and satisfying chunk that drove the pegs forward and permanently marked our life-changing choices with precise holes in the ballot.

Ballot.

What a wonderful word.

The power of the ballot. The right of every American (eventually, finally, and not without an ongoing struggle) to make their voice heard. In the era of Reagan, we were told that our right to the ballot was something that set us apart from the godless Commies that the old guys in my neighborhood and up-and-comers like Rush Limbaugh like to…shall we say…not so politely discuss.

I grew up seeing that the power of the ballot was not absolute, though. Every few years as a kid, we would gather at a neighbor’s house, my parents and I, my little sister in her in stroller, to collect pamphlets and troop through our designated blocks to convince the residents that this year, not next time, but this year would be the year that someone honest would become mayor of Providence. Then we’d all return to the same house, enjoy some pizza, and wait for Election Day. My parents would dutifully vote and then attempt to refrain from swearing as Buddy Cianci, again, would charm the little old ladies and everyone else into giving him another few years.

But this was also the era of Claiborne Pell and John Chafee and if given the opportunity, it was perfectly acceptable for my parents and others to go into the voting booth, split the ticket, and vote for both good men with the flick of a switch and the lever’s ker-chunk. And even if you didn’t like the opponent or the incumbent, there was still a sense of respect expected.

My friends and I started to do a dance when, on the way back from a weekend on Block Island, we heard that Ronald Reagan had been shot. We thought our parents would also be happy as all of them were terrified of his politics and the thought he’d bring fiery nuclear death down upon us. But instead, they spoke with the experience of growing up in the shadows of John and Bobby and Martin’s assassinations. We were silenced and scolded, our parents drilling into us the message that the assassination of a national leader was a horrible thing that tore apart the country and weakened us from within, regardless of their politics. But it was still perfectly alright to speak out against them, to raise money and energy and volunteer in opposition to them, and then to go into the booth and vote for the other guy.

I never got to cast my vote using that magic booth. My eighteenth birthday came during my senior year of high school, and then I changed states, moving to Minnesota for college. My first roommate met me wearing a t-shirt that showed a red continental United States but for a blue Minnesota and the slogan, “Ronald Reagan…not our fault” as Minnesota had been the sole state not to fall to his charms. Welcome to life at a liberal arts college in a liberal metro area among the rural reds. The next election was sophomore year and I was in Minnesota, which used fill-in-the-dot ballots that caused PTSD for those of us only recently beyond the reach of the SATs.

And that’s when I first tasted what it was like to vote for the losing side. Did I love Dukakis as a candidate? Nope, but he was a Democrat (or Democrat-Farm-Labor in Minnesota-ese) and there was no way I’d vote for Bush.

Voting for a loser sucked but the world didn’t swirl into the hell mouth and life went on.

In 1990, I crossed the aisle and enthusiastically voted for the Republican candidate for Governor, Arne Carlson, because like John Chafee, he was a good man and a moderate. Plus, all of us on campus thought the incumbent, Rudy Perpich, was a colossal dick and did Minnesota really need a chopstick factory in the northern woods? At the same time, college professor Paul Wellstone gave me my first taste of a truly popular, exciting, engaging candidate as he crisscrossed the state in a school bus and pickup truck and got all of us DFLers on campus to hit the streets enthusiastically in support of his cause.

The came ’92 when I drove home to Rhode Island from my job on Cape Cod to be sure to vote for Clinton and Gore and stay up until the winner was announced.

Was that when things began to change? Was that when the tone of our elections began to get vicious and the space between election days began to curdle? Or had it always been like that and I just never saw it? Elections in Rhode Island and Connecticut and Minnesota always seemed engaged, energetic, passionate, but not vicious and cruel and corrupt. Okay, maybe Rhode Island was corrupt but Buddy Cianci did come across as a nice guy when he was out pressing the flesh and meeting voters.

But 1992 and the years after became something different. The passion and enthusiasm felt like they were gone or were hanging out in a few local candidates here and there. Clinton was another colossal disappointment in his own way with charisma sufficient to fill a large hotel and a list of policies that were in the correct column so I eld my nose and dutifully voted to send him back to the White House. And then I crossed the aisle to vote for John McCain in the primaries to do my little bit to tank W’s candidacy here in Rhode Island before crossing back to vote for Al Gore and the odious Joe Lieberman.

Nope, no passion there, just anger at how Florida could so royally fuck things up with the all-important, seemingly all-powerful ballot. How hard could it be to design a ballot that someone could follow?
And again in 2004, the desire to remove W was a greater impetus to vote than to support Kerry.

But the state of things changed again when Obama came onto the scene. I imagined this was how it felt to see the Beatles or to be entranced by Kennedy and Camelot. Suddenly, and for the first time, there was a candidate I truly cared about, one who spoke with eloquence and power, who envisioned a state and a nation that reflected our better angels and the potential for our future. I shouted with joy when he was elected and then did it again when he returned to the White House four years later.

The state of our union was strong and bright, hopeful and, with the birth of our daughter, multicolored like our family.

And that’s why the last four years have felt like such a horror show. Stunned horror as the election returns rolled in on that night, revealing that the con man, the bigot, the abuser, the fraud was going to occupy the highest seat in the land. Even the sight of millions protesting only weeks after his inauguration was not enough to overcome the horror of the immediate actions to bar the doors to those in need, and then the seemingly never-ending feelings of fury and grief and worry and more horror at the steady drumbeat of corruption, of hatred, of denied equality, of fear of the world my daughter was growing into with a sick, twisted little man telling her and millions of others around this nation that they weren’t right, they weren’t as human, that they weren’t worth the same as him and his followers.

And the state of our nation was weak, riddled through with holes like a wooden boat pierced by worms and taking on water, sinking as the captain declared that all who followed him would stay dry.

I went to Town Hall and filled out my ballot, hoping against hope that things might change as it was ingested by the machine. But I entered Election Day wondering if our state was capable of change, if there were enough people, if there was enough passion, to stand up and say “no more.”

I went to bed Election Eve wondering if that country I’d seen through Obama’s words and the deeds of him, his brilliant wife, his vice president, and his team had made so tantalizingly real for eight years, was really and truly gone. For another four years of the con man might have been too much for our state to bear, to ever change and turn away from the course he sought to set.

In the coming days, as wary confidence began to creep back in, my daughter would ask me incessantly, “what’s the score? Who’s winning?” and I saw in her, the same blossoming hope that led me to check my election tracker every fifteen to twenty minutes to get that next little jolt of positive energy.

No longer was I doomscrolling. Instead, I was gleefreshing, sucking up every positive change in the numbers I found online and finally bursting into tears at that glorious moment when Pennsylvania was called. And then I blinked away tears again that night as I saw my daughter’s eyes locked like lasers on the brilliant, beautiful, dark skinned woman who stood up and declared victory not only for Joe Biden and her but also for all of the little girls who needed to see that their way was not going to be barred, that things could change for the better, that our state could and would be strong again.

And with a smile, I ignored the petty, pitiful, terrified little man living in his fantastical realm and frantically denying reality. At least the Wizard of Oz, behind his curtain and in his booth in his gleaming emerald state, knew he was a fraud and simply did the best he could.

[This piece is also available in audio form on The Epic Pencil podcast.]