Voting Early (But Not Often)

Who knew when I moved to North Carolina that I'd be so important to the rest of the nation? Every time you look at a newspaper these days, it's all about the North Carolina Democratic Primary on Tuesday.

Me, I've already voted.

North Carolina has something called "early voting." I'd never heard of such a thing, although everyone here seems to think it's so normal as to be unworthy of comment or explanation. I guess if you can get enough people to work the polls for a good three weeks before the primary, you too can have early voting.

Still, I was suspicious. Who's to say the box with your ballot won't get lost between the day you vote and election day?

My suspicion is not entirely unfounded. (Just like my suspicion that if I don't ask for a receipt at the gas pump my credit card number will somehow remain in the machine to be spit out at the next customer; this fear was justified when I had ATM card information stolen from a gas pump a few years ago, almost making the hassle worth it.) I'm still smarting from my first presidential election in 1984. I was a freshman in college and duly requested my absentee ballot. Some fiasco on which I am now a little bit fuzzy occurred that launched me into a fiery letter addressed to my Senators about being disenfranchised on this, my first chance to vote the way a left-leaning eighteen-year-old easily influenced by the politics of a notoriously left-leaning college campus would vote. Alan Cranston's office responded; the newly elected Republican Pete Wilson's office did not. I still didn't get to vote.

I was also feeling jealous of my vote in the primary election this year because it actually matters. I spent much of my voting life in places like California and Massachusetts, where the Dems really didn't need my vote. And primary elections? Even living in states with elections far earlier than ridiculously late North Carolina, I frequently found myself voting for the guy who had already dropped out of the race: in 1992 in New York, I voted for Bob Kerrey after he had ceded the race to Bill Clinton, and in 2004 in pre-move-up-our-primary-date-because-we-have-so-many-delegates California, I voted for Edwards even though John Kerry already had the nomination. Not alone among the disenfranchised, I was pleased to find that I, Hubby (Kucinich), and my best friend (Dean) had all managed to vote for different candidates without a one of us voting for Kerry.

Then there was the actual Presidential election of 1980, when my father drove to the polls in Los Angeles after work to vote for Carter while listening to his concession speech on the radio.
The fact that I remember this somewhat humiliating event shows just what a mark it left on me.

And so my fear of early voting, of the chance that this, my second vote that could count, might not. (The first time I felt like my vote counted, I help elect the dead guy to one of Missouri's U.S. Senate seats; the defeated John Ashcroft went on to be a calamitous Attorney General, a tenure for which my family still blames me.) Still, all three Clintons and Michelle Obama have already made their pitches here. People are holding out hope for Barack, but the message is clear. We're almost expected to do the early voting thing.

Then, on Thursday evening, Hubby came home grinning about how much fun he had had early voting that day. He dropped a post-it with the names of candidates running for state seats in front of me and said, "I did a little research. In case you want to know who else to vote for."

"Because I should let me husband tell me whom to vote for," I said, pretending to be offended but really both surprised there were other opposed offices and relieved that I wouldn't have to figure out for myself which candidate I supported.

"You don't have to vote for the same people," Hubby pointed out. But I already knew I was going to. And I knew I was going to do it the following day, Friday.

The next afternoon, I headed for the local public library, one of several early voting polling places.

My understanding is that one of the justifications for offering early voting is to avoid the long lines on election day that somehow seem to end up only at polling places in heavily Democratic precincts. But here I was in a strictly partisan primary and I couldn't find a spot in the parking lot.

Weaving my way around an aggressive senior citizen cruising for the next available spot, I parked illegally at the side of the building. We were all compatriots, I figured, responsible citizens being sure to vote early.

As I crossed the parking lot, I spotted a table set up just beyond the no-solicitation zone with a sign reading OBAMA TICKETS HERE. Hmm, I thought, never having voted in North Carolina before. Maybe here they offer you a whole ticket to go along with the presidential candidate of your choice.

I walked over to the table, thinking maybe I could toss aside my husband's voting directive in favor of directions from complete strangers. Then I noticed the name "Michelle" written in the top corner of the sign. Michelle Obama, I recalled, was speaking that afternoon at the UNC Asheville campus. It was this sort of ticket being distributed, not some additional quirk of the North Carolina voting system. Since I already had plans to do something non-historic that evening, I kept going.

Inside, the polling place looked pretty much like most places I've voted, except maybe the garage where we regularly did our local voting in Long Beach. There was no place to tie up the dogs, had I brought them, here. But there was the same phalanx of tables: one where they would check you off on the rolls, a separate one where you got your ballot, and the rickety tables where you were instructed to mark your ballot only with the pen provided (in my case, a plain old Bic ballpoint with a big feather attached to the end that made me feel a vague connection to the Founding Fathers).

The one big difference from my past voting experiences was that the two women checking in voters were using laptops instead of big books of names that no one ever seems to be able to negotiate. I stepped up to the elder of the two, a woman of about 70, perched behind her shiny silver Dell. She blew away all the senior citizens who volunteered in the polls in West Hollywood and couldn't quite seem to be able to handle those new-fangled books that listed the voters alphabetically.

She asked my name, and I went through the contortions I condemned myself to when I chose to add Hubby's surname to my own without bothering to put a hyphen between them.

"It's two words," I said. "Cole, C-O-L-E . . ."

Her fingers were so fast there was no need for me to continue. I wasn't there.

"It's probably under Essig," I said wearily. You'd think I'd be over the frustration of strangers relegating half of my last name to the role of forgotten and useless middle name by now, as well as to that moment of wondering just who "Melissa Essig" is.

But this septugenarian computer whiz saved me. "Do you want to try your birthday?" she asked.

And there it was, my truncated name. But here's what I loved most about my voting experience. She FIXED it. This diminutive, white-haired, sweet old lady sent her fingers flying over the keys of a fancy new laptop and moments later handed me a sheet of paper with my full, proper name on it. So next time I vote early there will be no confusion.

And so I cast my vote with the feather-adorned pen and fed my ballot into the machine that counts how many ballots go in. (Will it add its count to all the other boxes so we know not only if a ballot is lost from a particular box but will be alerted when the entire box is locked in a room in the library basement, mistaken for old books?) I happily put my "I Voted" sticker on, even though it felt funny to be wearing it four days before the primary election.

And I watched Obama on Meet the Press this morning just to make sure the vote I've already cast was the one I felt was right. I wonder if anyone has told him about early voting.