As promised, I voted today and then visited a friend who was a poll watcher at a heavily blue precinct.
Here’s my report.
There was no wait at my polling station, a sparse ballot and no apparent problem scanning my completed ballot.
The lack of a line surprised me. But, upon exiting, I asked a volunteer outside for her observations and she said there had been heavy turnout early. I spoke with her just before lunch and she anticipated a rush shortly, and after working hours.
The scene was similar in terms of few voters when I arrived at the voting place where my friend was observing things from the Republican angle.
It was serendipitous to find that the Democrat volunteer, handing out fingernail files with a candidate’s name on them, also was an acquaintance from my days spent working for the local daily rag.
What ensued was some entertaining conversation, a few mildly amusing observations, and a sense of nostalgia for the way politics used to be.
To set the cast, my friend Roger The K is a white Republican. Clyde The W, the other poll volunteer, is a black Democrat.
You might be surprised to learn that Roger showed up with his own chair and table. Noticing that Clyde had no seat, Roger went inside the polling place and got him one.
I wore my red hat which reads “Relax Idiots It’s Just A Hat” emblazoned on the front. No one said a word about it.
Both Clyde and Roger told me that Clyde had been taking a lot of grief from voters unhappy with Democrats. One told Clyde he’d be voting for Shirley Chisholm, who in 1968 became the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
People, said Clyde, had been harsh.
I observed some people inexplicably taking handouts from both Clyde and Roger. Others gave themselves away by taking from one and disdaining the offer from the other.
Most were polite about it. Some were not.
During the time spent chatting with Clyde and Roger, I ran into one of the greatest athletes in the history of Johnstown High School, Chuck The W. We reminisced about his glory days and caught up on other aspects of life.
He’s black and I’m thinking a Democrat. I’m white and a Republican. Yet all was cordial.
It certainly didn’t feel like democracy was on its deathbed and we soon were to be combatants in a civil war.
There were some amusing aspects to the overall experience.
An older man with a red Trump hat engaged Roger about the sad state of Democrats and was urged to move along and vote by a black security man, lest that Trump man “incite” something.
Roger noted that the man was free to express his opinions more than 10 feet from the polling station, and looking around at a crowd that included no one besides the few workers and me, Roger wondered who the man might incite.
Then Roger offered an opinion to me that Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman is unfit physically or mentally to serve. I agreed and the security man got in his vehicle and left.
Roger told me that man had bought him a coffee earlier and likely now he would want paid for it.
A black man exited having voted and told us, kiddingly I presume, that he’d gotten it all straightened out.
Another duo, a black man and black woman, came out later with the man proclaiming “Frank Burns (a Democratic incumbent member of the state house) for president.”
The pair then climbed into a Cadillac Escalade parked in a handicapped spot and exited the one-way parking lot in the wrong direction.
Ironic, right?
Clyde had just moved his chair a bit to stay in the sunshine on this brisk, but sunny day. Roger was about to go inside to check some tallies.
I prepared to leave. But first, Clyde, Roger and I noted politics needed more of this pleasant give and take. Clyde brought up someone throwing cans of beer at Ted Cruz in Houston and how disgusting that was.
We all lamented voting shenanigans, be they committed by Democrats or Republicans.
“If you have to cheat to win,” said Clyde, “it’s not worth it.”
Well said, Clyde.
And a tip of the cap to Roger The K, who arrived at 6:30 in the morning and by virtue of his poll-watcher status (he had his certificate and showed it to me) would be locked inside when voting ended at 8 p.m. to monitor the count.
How long he was going to be there, he didn’t know.
All of this was as a volunteer doing his bit in trying to insure election integrity. I applaud him for his efforts.
Sam Ross Jr's site 