Election Day at Last--Civic Marathoners Ready to Collapse After the Finish

 

In a nation deeply and bitterly divided Election Day angst and exhaustion are the order of the day.  Will it be a dumpster fire for democracy? 

It's finally Election Day.  Here in Northern Illinois and adjacent states like vital Wisconsin it is raw. raining on and off, and blustery giving it a suitable Sturm und Drang cast that matches the anxiety so many of us feel.  In conventional wisdom these conditions suppress voter turn out.  People getting off of work did not like to stand in miserable lines outside jammed polling places or drive on rain slick pavement in the dark.  Casual or not deeply connected voters were discouraged.  Suburban Democrats in Red collar counties were notoriously easily daunted because they had faint hope that they had any chance for representation in important down ballot local races.  Increasingly right wing Republicans from the Tea Party to the MAGA crowd would, as I have observed many times over the years, "crawl through glass" to elect their candidates.  Advantage GOP.

But mail-in and early voting has changed that.  Democrats have pushed early voting here since Barack Obama's first election and the percentage of their supporters opting for it has grown steadily giving them an increasing edge.  In the last election Trump and his minions vilified early voting and falsely charged it as an opportunity for election fraud.  Instead, he urged his supporters to turn out on election day to insure that early returns before early and mail in ballots were counted to show election night leads.  

Trump thought otherwise this time out.  Now he encouraged his most loyal supporters to vote early to match or offset the Democratic advantage.  The question is, did the reprogramming actually work?  Older White men, the Orange Menace's prime demographic, still seem to prefer traditional balloting.

(Side note--as a member of that cohort I have to ask, just what the hell is wrong with men?)

Of course Illinois is one of the safest Blue States in the nation and has strengthening that tendency since the 1960 razor thin victory of John F. Kennedy.  Suburban Cook County and metropolitan collar counties which once nearly balanced the huge Democratic advantage in Chicago and conservative rural and Down State areas.  but many of those areas have turned purple or even flipped Blue like former bastions Lake and Dupage counties.  Even here in McHenry County where the Republicans still dominate local offices,  Obama won in 2008,  Joe Biden came withing a hair, and local voters have gone for Democrats for state constitutional offices, and U.S. Senate.

Neighbors and even family members are deeply split this election.  Personal relationships are ruptured adding yet more stress.

The difference has been women whose drift away from the GOP has accelerated and finally become a panicked stampede after the Trump puppets on the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.

The national the Gender Gap is wider than ever and higher percentages of women actually cast ballots than men.

The pundits and talking heads still beat the band that the electorate is still split nearly in half and flickers either side of a dead heat in the critical six or seven battleground states that hold the key for an Electoral College victory and they have polls to prove it and keeping us all on jagged edge.

I think those polls under represent the rage and determination of women who have been the targets of intense voter turnout campaigns.  They will out-perform expectations.  So will blocks of voters with other key issues--youth voters and anti-gun violence advocates, climate change, LGBTQ+ rights and safety, election integrity and saving democracy, and minority rights.  Some "experts" wave their hand at the potential extra margins provided by these citizens claiming "liberals all stick together on a broad range of issues with the overlap of concerns limiting extra advantage.  True, as far as it goes, but at least some of those "single issue" voters are less motivated when they are not immanently threatened. Much depends on whose ox gets gored.  And all of these folks are likely under reported in the polls.

In addition, the drumbeat of traditional Republican conservatives like Liz Cheney, George Wills, and former Trump Cabinet members and national security heavies,  seems to be eroding Trump's base.  Dems recognized that when they began to assure Republican women that they could safely and secretly vote differently from their husbands.  Many will boycott the top of the ticket or vote for Harris without tipping their hands to voracious and possibly dangerous neighbors.  Another edge to Democrats.

I boldly predict the Harris-Waltz ticket will out-preform exceptions, win the popular vote, carry most swing states, and even bring others into play as the late Des Moines Register poll that show Harris up by 3% in that deep Red state suggests.  In Pennsylvania 400,000 Puerto Rican voters, easily enough to swing the state, are reported outraged by the "Floating Island of Garbage" comments at last week's Madison Square Garden hate fest.  On the other hand hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Michigan could boycott the top of the Democratic ticket over the War in Gaza.

Finally, many voters are sick to death after years of Trump psychodrama and just want it to end. 

The influx of Harris support will likely carry down ballot giving Democrats a good chance of retaining control of the Senate and even re-capturing the House.

Of course, my record of electoral prognostication is somewhat sketchy.

Here in McHenry County many Democrats will gather for this watch party at the historic Woodstock Opera House, but we won's know the final outcome of the Presidential election when the venue closes at 11 pm.

It could be days before the final results are known because of delays in counting mail in early ballots and likely Trump court challenges meant to once again undermine faith in election integrity and results evoking traumatic memories of four years ago.

There is nothing left for us to do but suck it up and be ready for a wild ride.

 

Confessions of a Habitual Voter and Two Bit Pol—A Murfin Memoir

Election Day by Norman Rockwell. 1942.

Back when I was a young Wobbly hanging around at the anarchist Solidarity Bookstore in Chicago, the byword among my friends and fellow workers around election time was, “Don’t vote, it only encourages them.”  I would laugh along with the line and nod my head.  After all, I had punched my ticket as young radical and would hardly do anything to jeopardize that standing.  Then Election Day would roll around and I would look over my shoulder and make sure no one was looking and skulk over to a polling place in some school gym or Legion Hall, pull that sideways lever behind me closing the red, white, and blue striped curtain, and start flipping switches on the voting machine.  I couldn’t help myself.

I blame it on my parents.  Just like drunks lacing the apple juice with whiskey to “help the baby sleep” or junkies skin popping their toddlers.  Yeah, just like that.  I have very early memories of them hauling me and my twin brother Tim to the polls at some ridiculously early age.  Actually, I best remember standing by my Dad’s long legs, holding on to his wool suit pants while he did something mysterious and holy or going with my Mom and clinging to her official Jane Wyatt flaring skirts.  We didn’t do it often, but when we did it was apparent that it was really, really important.  So I caught the habit like I did standing up and putting my hat over my heart every single time an American Flag passed in a parade.  I still do that, too.  Yeah, I’m that hopeless.

I learned eventually that although both of the folks went to vote, they didn’t vote the same way.  Dad was a Republican of the Eisenhower stripe.  Mom with all of the fervor a woman who had gone hungry in the Great Depression voted Democrat.  Despite the fact that I emulated my father with all of the slavish devotion of hero worship in most things, I ended up in my Mom’s political party.

Senator John F. Kennedy with Wyoming Senator Gale McGee arrive at Cheyenne Airport for a brief campaign stop in 1960.  It's really his fault I became hooked on voting.

That was probably John F. Kennedy’s fault.  Yeah, that’s the guy. 

As a nerdy kid, I already had more than a healthy interest in politics.  I remember being fascinated by coverage of the national political conventions four years earlier when I was only 7—watching Walter Cronkite in a little box in one corner of the screen with his headphones on as grainy pictures of ecstatic delegates parading with signs and banners wavered across the screen.

And that year, 1960, I had sent away to Mad Magazine for the official Alfred E. Neuman for President kit—posters, buttons, bumper stickers, and a plastic boater hat with a red, white, and blue ribbon—and actually campaigned door to door in my neighborhood as if it were a real campaign.  

Before being hooked on Kennedy I wore a button like this as I earnestly canvased my Cheyenne neighborhood door to door. 

 But as the election drew near, I became more drawn to the charismatic young Democrat.  I bought and read his paperback campaign biography and then found a young reader’s edition of Profiles in Courage.  I watched the famous debate and thought Nixon looked like one of the shifty gamblers in a two reel western that the good guy shoots when he pulls a derringer out of his sleeve.  My Dad told me that Nixon was the grown up and Kennedy was just “a spoiled rich man’s son.”  I would have none of it.  Oh, how I yearned to go to the polls and be part of the history that I was sure would change the world.   Election night I stayed up well after midnight glued to the returns until it was called in the hours right before dawn.

On a windy day in late September 1963 I actually got to see the President as he flew in for a brief stop at the Cheyenne, Wyoming airport to make a quick speech and fulfill a foolishly made promise to visit all 50 states.  I pressed up against the chain link fence when he bolted from his security detail to touch hands with those along that fence to see him.  He passed right before me, his flesh missing mine by inches.  Less than two months later he was dead.  That day was the most traumatic of my young life.  But that’s another tale.

I turned 21 and finally eligible to vote in 1970.  I was already a veteran anti-war activist and blooming radical.  I had “voted” in the streets against the Vietnam War during the 1968 Democratic Convention.  Now I was a resident of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago living in the rundown, gang infested part of the old 43rd Ward—the epicenter of Lakefront Liberalism further east.  But where I lived on Howe Street, west of Old Town and the urban removal wreckage of Larrabee Avenue the Hillbillies, Puerto Ricans, and old Germans hung on desperately resisting displacement. 

I slipped away downtown one day in March right after my birthday and registered to vote at the County Clerk’s office.   I cast my first vote at the Fire House on Armitage just a block from my place.  It was a thrill which I could feel tingling in every part of my body.  I voted for Adlai Stevenson III for Senator.

A People's Party brochure for Dr. Benjamin for President in 1972.  I wrote him in in my first Presidential Election.

By 1972 I was living on Webster Avenue right across from the old DePaul University gymnasium.  That was also my polling place.  It was my first presidential election.  I wrote in Benjamin Spock, the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party who was not on the ballot in Illinois, or very many other places outside of California.  It was the last time I would “waste” my vote on a protest candidate.

The next year I was a guest of the government serving a sentence for draft resistance.  When I got out, there was some fear that I would be ineligible to vote.  But Illinois is one of the states that does not bar felons from voting and later I would also be covered by Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon of Draft offenders.  Over the next decade I moved around the city multiple times, but always made sure I was correctly registered at my new addresses by the time of any election—special, primary, or general.

After a brief departure for Madison, Wisconsin I returned to Chicago just in time for the infamous Blizzard of ’79 and as the snow slowly melted got involved in my first electoral campaign as a low level volunteer for radical Helen Schiller’s early unsuccessful run for Alderman in the Uptown centered 48th Ward. Four years later I was living on Albany Street near Diversy in Dick Mell’s 33rd Ward, and volunteered for Harold Washington in the Democratic Primary for Mayor.  In the General Election I was a de facto Washington precinct captain since the regulars were supporting Republican Bernard Epton. 

We voted at an American Legion Post.  For the first time I was able to bring my new daughters by marriage, Carolynne and Heather with me as I voted, just as my parents brought me.  I was determined to pass on the infection.

By the next round of election the whole family was relocated to Crystal Lake in the wilds of McHenry County where Republicans strutted unchallenged and lowly Democrats cringed and hid.  I didn’t care for that.  So I signed up to run for Democratic Precinct Committeeman.   It got to be a habit.  I walked the blocks and rang doorbells for nearly 28 years.  Found a few Democrats.  Encouraged others.  Not once did I carry that precinct, or even come close.  But I’d be damned if I would just give it to the bastards.

We first voted at a Dodge dealership just a block up the road from the house.  Voting booths set up amid the shiny new cars.  I brought Maureen, a three year old toddler holding my hand wondering what it was all about.  Later the polling place moved a bit further away, to the offices of Flowerwood Nursery around the corner on Rt. 14.  Then it was at North Middle School until the hysterics decided that voters were likely to be sex predators or terrorists and could not be allowed in the same building with their little darlings.  Those self-same darlings lost the regular awareness that voting was a part of life.  Congratulations for a job well done on that.

Next they moved our polling place out of the precinct over to the basement of Salvation Army several blocks away where we shared the space with another precinct.  After some years another round of polling place consolidations it landed at a Park District building next to North Elementary.  I could walk to and from all of these locations after I got off the Pace Bus after work in Woodstock.  Then after the last post-census reapportionment and redistricting I was assigned a new Nunda Township precinct number and more polling places consolidation ended up assigned to another Park District building, the Rotary Building of of Walkup Ave.  And that, alas, is too far an old man with a gimpy leg and a touch of A-Fib to walk to.   

Over the years I helped on a lot of campaigns, local, state, and national.  I got elected a McHenry County Central Committee officer—Vice Chair and Secretary.  Even served a few months as Chair after Bob McGary suddenly died.  I did publicity and tried to make myself useful.  We made small inroads.  Even won a little victory here and there occasionally.  But mostly we lost elections.  A lot of ‘em.  And I voted in every one of them.

I even ran for office myself.  Got past a cavalry charge of an open, non-partisan primary for Crystal Lake City Council one year when the whole town was mad at the incumbents, but got my ass handed to me in the Municipal elections.  Not smart enough to know better, I tried again running as a Democrat for County Board and for the lowly post of Nunda Township Trustee.  A dead skunk would have polled as well.

One year the Democrats even gave me a plaque with my name engraved on it, a pat on the head, and let me ramble for a few moments at the annual Thomas Jefferson Dinner fund raiser.  That was nice.  No one ever gave me an award before and none are ever likely to again.  It looks semi-impressive on my study wall.

By 1972 I was living on Webster Avenue right across from the old DePaul University gymnasium.  That was also my polling place.  It was my first presidential election.  I wrote in Benjamin Spock, the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party who was not on the ballot in Illinois, or very many other places outside of California.  It was the last time I would “waste” my vote on a protest candidate.

The next year I was a guest of the government serving a sentence for draft resistance.  When I got out, there was some fear that I would be ineligible to vote.  But Illinois is one of the states that does not bar felons from voting and later I would also be covered by Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon of Draft offenders.  Over the next decade I moved around the city multiple times, but always made sure I was correctly registered at my new addresses by the time of any election—special, primary, or general.

After a brief departure for Madison, Wisconsin I returned to Chicago just in time for the infamous Blizzard of ’79 and as the snow slowly melted got involved in my first electoral campaign as a low level volunteer for radical Helen Schiller’s early unsuccessful run for Alderman in the Uptown centered 48th Ward. Four years later I was living on Albany Street near Diversy in Dick Mell’s 33rd Ward, and volunteered for Harold Washington in the Democratic Primary for Mayor.  In the General Election I was a de facto Washington precinct captain since the regulars were supporting Republican Bernard Epton.  

I got my first real baptism in active campaigning in Harold Washington's two Chicago Mayor races.

We voted at an American Legion Post.  For the first time I was able to bring my new daughters by marriage, Carolynne and Heather with me as I voted, just as my parents brought me.  I was determined to pass on the infection.

By the next round of election the whole family was relocated to Crystal Lake in the wilds of McHenry County where Republicans strutted unchallenged and lowly Democrats cringed and hid.  I didn’t care for that.  So I signed up to run for Democratic Precinct Committeeman.   It got to be a habit.  I walked the blocks and rang doorbells for nearly 28 years.  Found a few Democrats.  Encouraged others.  Not once did I carry that precinct, or even come close.  But I’d be damned if I would just give it to the bastards.

We first voted at a Dodge dealership just a block up the road from the house.  Voting booths set up amid the shiny new cars.  I brought Maureen, a three year old toddler holding my hand wondering what it was all about.  Later the polling place moved a bit further away, to the offices of Flowerwood Nursery around the corner on Rt. 14.  Then it was at North Middle School until the hysterics decided that voters were likely to be sex predators or terrorists and could not be allowed in the same building with their little darlings.  Those self-same darlings lost the regular awareness that voting was a part of life.  Congratulations for a job well done on that.

Next they moved our polling place out of the precinct over to the basement of Salvation Army several blocks away where we shared the space with another precinct.  After some years another round of polling place consolidations it landed at a Park District building next to North Elementary.  I could walk to and from all of these locations after I got off the Pace Bus after work in Woodstock.  Then after the last post-census reapportionment and redistricting I was assigned a new Nunda Township precinct number and more polling places consolidation ended up assigned to another Park District building, the Rotary Building of of Walkup Ave.  And that, alas, is too far an old man with a gimpy leg and a touch of A-Fib to walk to.   

Over the years I helped on a lot of campaigns, local, state, and national.  I got elected a McHenry County Central Committee officer—Vice Chair and Secretary.  Even served a few months as Chair after Bob McGary suddenly died.  I did publicity and tried to make myself useful.  We made small inroads.  Even won a little victory here and there occasionally.  But mostly we lost elections.  A lot of ‘em.  And I voted in every one of them.

 

  Hosting a torch light rally for McHenry County Democratic candidates from the Gazebo in Woodstock Square.about 2004.

I even ran for office myself.  Got past a cavalry charge of an open, non-partisan primary for Crystal Lake City Council one year when the whole town was mad at the incumbents, but got my ass handed to me in the Municipal elections.  Not smart enough to know better, I tried again running as a Democrat for County Board and for the lowly post of Nunda Township Trustee.  A dead skunk would have polled as well.

One year the Democrats even gave me a plaque with my name engraved on it, a pat on the head, and let me ramble for a few moments at the annual Thomas Jefferson Dinner fund raiser.  That was nice.  No one ever gave me an award before and none are ever likely to again.  It looks semi-impressive on my study wall.

 

                With Barack Obama cut-out in 2010 at the Democratic Party booth at the McHenry County Fair when he was running for Senate.

There were high points.  In 2008 we carried McHenry County for Barack Obama and the whole statewide ticket.  Turns out that there really are Democrats out here, but they are generally too discouraged, too fearful of the opinions of their Republican neighbors, and too damned lazy to get out and vote most years.  That election and celebrating at the Old Courthouse in McHenry was one of the best moments of my life.  Four years later we managed just not to lose the country too badly, which is better than anyone expected.

Some folks wonder if I was disappointed in Obama.  Not really.  There is lots of stuff I disagreed with him about—especially his continuing reliance on the blunt instrument of military power—and I have not been shy about calling him out about it or protesting.  And I wish he could have done more—moved universal single payer health insurance—instead of the badly made half-loaf of so-called Obama Care.  But at least it is a half loaf and a lot of folks won’t go hungry because of it.  On the whole he did about as well and anyone could expect against the raging and united opposition of a political party gone mad and an assertive not-to-be-denied oligarchy.

In 2013 I hung up my clipboard as a committee person.  Someone else’s turn.  I took a pass  on meetings and rallies, phone banking and worse, fundraising.  I’m an armchair politician now.

But it’s Election Day has come around.  The alarm bell has gone off.  The old fire horse is up for another run.  But this year I won't get up in the morning and put on my Election Day tie—the one with the cowboys on horseback and big American Flags.  I can’t say it’s a lucky tie, because it has seen mostly lost elections.  But I wear it because the Republicans think they own the flag and it literally drives the worst of them into a frothing rage to see it worn by a commie/pinko/babykiller/fag/democrat.  I won't be lining up at the Polls--I probably couldn't get there.  I cast an early vote at a station in the Crystal Lake Public Library almost two weeks ago.

I was not alone--record numbers are doing it not just obscure McHenry County, but all around the country.  Many are women--really, really pissed off women, members of communities that feel like they have a target on their backs, folks simply freaked out and traumatized.  And I hear whispers out here that there are traditional Republics who will secretly vote for Kamala Harris out of sight of the most intimidating MAGA Trump loyalists.  That gives me hope.

No, election day will not feel just the same as the old polling place ritual.  I may hardly know what to do with my self all day amid rising Election Day anxiety.  Maybe after I get the family fed, I'll snag a ride to the Results watch party that my old pal McHenry County Board member and candidate is hosting at the Woodstock Opera House--a pretty nice spot with a bar.  Most local candidates and their key supporters will probably attend.  That's a tradition, too

And I will feel good.  Damned good.  I’ll have had my fix.

 

National Poetry Month—Three Poems for Election Day

George Caleb Bingham’s The County Election, 1852

It’s Election Day so we depart from the customary poet and poem of the day format for our celebration of National Poetry Month to present a trio of meditations on exercising the franchise by three iconic American poets.

Stunned? Surprised?  Want to scream into your computer, “Murfin, you moron, elections aren’t until November and this is an off year when nobody is running for anything”?

Ah, but I live in Illinois which takes voting so seriously that we have two to four every year, depending on the necessity of primaries.  Today is the Spring Consolidated Election when voters a lured to the polls by municipal, township, school district, park district, fire district and other assorted local taxing bodies plus various referenda. 

It isn’t even close, Illinois has more elected bodies and officials than any other state, ergo more elections.  Despite the official fondness of elections, if 15% of registered voters participate it will be considered a heavy turn-out.  Neither  the colorful signs that have popped up in yards and along roadsides across the country nor the pages of endorsement letters to the editor in the Northwest Herald have made most folks more than dimly aware that there are contests.

With so many different races on the ballot, these elections often turn into what I call friends and family affairs—only the friends and family of the candidates and a handful cranks and single-issue voters bother to show up.  I know.  I ran in this election two different times over the years—for Crystal Lake City Council and Nunda Township Board—and had my ass handed to me both times.  Small family and not nearly enough friends. 

It’s hard work trying to be an informed voter in so many races.  Even a local political junkie like me can’t really keep track.  This time out there is only one tax related county wide referendum—for the establishment of yet another taxing body to fund services for the developmentally disabled—to drive the no-taxes-any-time-for-any-reason zealots to the polls.  No one expects the referendum to pass despite the fact that Illinois is dead last in funding services to that population and that the state budget crisis is stripping what little money is available.

The hottest race is, for all things, the McHenry County Community College Board in which there is a cavalry charge of candidates all worked up about expansion plans and—you guessed it—possible future tax hikes.

Anyway we salute those who enter the lists and those who can be stirred from apathy and lethargy to get a little American Flag “I Voted” sticker slapped on their coats with these poems.  A thank you to About.com for a handy selection that popped up with the easy entry of Election Day poems in the search engine.

First, the 19th Century Quaker Poet John Greenleaf Whittier serves up an idealized picture of bucolic democracy.

The Poor Voter on Election Day

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretense
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man’s common sense
Against the pedant’s pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!
While there’s a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon’s vilest dust, —
While there’s a right to need my vote
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man’s a man to-day!

—John Greenleaf Whittier

Next we have the rapid reappearance of yesterday’s featured poet, Vachel Lindsay who is proud to explain his vote.

Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
Man is a curious brute — he pets his fancies —
Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury.
So he will be, tho’ law be clear as crystal,
Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony.
Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.

—Vachel Lindsay

 

And finally, another of my favorite poets, William Carlos Williams, the Unitarian obstetrician/gynecologist from Patterson, New Jersey who in the mid-20th Century made note of one who did not rush to the polls.

Election Day

Warm sun, quiet air
an old man sits
in the doorway of
a broken house—
boards for windows
plaster falling
from between the stones
and strokes the head
of a spotted dog

—William Carlos Williams