| | Our Greatest RightI have a confession…. I’m not entirely sure my 11th grade government
teacher would have been proud yesterday.
I voted. I did. And have to thank my civic-minded husband for
that. Which is funny, when you consider
that both his parents were Canadians living right outside Phillie for his whole
existence (and they just became US citizens a couple years ago), and so, he
never actually saw his parents vote. But
he is proud of the fact that since he’s turned 18, he has never missed an
election, a claim that I cannot make—it was something about moving and having
children and I can’t remember what that made me miss one (or was it two?) minor
elections.
But yesterday, we voted and dragged along all four kids, to
help instill patriotic duty into their souls.
I knew this was going to happen.
That same civic-minded person had mentioned on several different
occasions that election day was November 5th. So, I should have been prepared.
Still, when he called at 5:00
last night to say he had left work a tad early to vote and that I should throw
the kids in the car and meet him, I was thrown into a mild fluster. “But who are we going to vote for? I don’t even know who’s running!” He made some joke about voting the straight
party ticket that I did not appreciate. I
don’t want to be a straight-party conformist; I want to be a thoughtful, intelligent,
well-informed voter…which, obviously, I am not.
So, I ran to the internet and googled voting guides and the newspaper
and Family Research Council… and got nothing.
Well, not literally nothing.
There were lots of responses, but no articles that gave me any
information on the judges who were running for election or re-election or what
their stances were on anything.
So I abandoned the Well-Informed Voter guise and decided
just to appease my husband and try to make a sort-of-in-the-vicinity-of-timely
appearance (which is all I ever shoot for).
And I thought that really they ought to have a big list posted on the
walls of the voting halls that tell what each candidate stands for, in his/her
own words, of course. Or am I the only person
who missed last Wednesday’s voter guide in the paper and only listens to the
news as I race to piano lessons or soccer practice? I guess that is somewhat the purpose of those
kindhearted people who stand outside, freezing and handing you loads of
information on how great their candidates are.
So, I showed up, stared blankly at this list of completely-unknown-to-me
judges or judge-wannabes, touched the screen in touchable, blinky spaces, and
pushed my button to vote. Voila! Democracy
marches on. I’m not entirely sure that
that actually qualifies as voting. I was
just hoping as I made guesses for these judges that all of you are so much more
informed and full of integrity and civic-mindedness and stuff and are making a
great difference. Or at least that Dave
would vote completely opposite me on some of them, so we could cancel each
other out, and then I wouldn’t be directly responsible for the downfall of
society. |
