I have mixed feelings about the early voting.
We don't do that in New Jersey, except for actual absentee ballots, although I believe that the application for an absentee ballot no longer requires the voter to give a reason for needing it. My parents, in their final years, had permanent requests for absentee ballots, which had to have a doctor's signature when the original request went in.
The big push for early voting is going to be by mail, so that anyone can get what amounts to an absentee ballot and mail it in. That makes me nervous. How do we know that our mail will be delivered? I mean, we generally assume that it will be, but we've also all experienced mail not getting delivered. I don't want to put my ballot in a mailbox, where it will maybe get stuck in a crack somewhere, or fall to the floor of the mail delivery truck and get buried under something. I want to put my ballot in a ballot box at a polling place, or the electronic equivalent thereof.
Early voting at polling places would be a problem here, because most of our polling places are in schools. This year, for the first time ever, B-Town is closing the schools for students on election day. (It's an in-service day for staff, so we have to be here.) Having voters trooping through your schools while there are children there is just not safe in today's world, so we would have trouble establishing early voting in person. There are probably something like twelve or fifteen actual voting sites in this town, and nine of them are school buildings. (The others, I think, are fire stations. At least I voted at a fire station when I lived at home with Jack and Shirl.) And it's the same for most of the towns around here. So how would they work that out?
The early voting is supposed to be more convenient, but the lines I've seen on TV in Florida and elsewhere don't look so good to me. What we need, I guess, is an overhaul of the whole system, but since the systems are statewide and not national, that could take some doing. I don't really know what system I would trust most, although I'm not unhappy with the system we use here now. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country, and we get our voting done in person at polling places, and done in one day.
Four years ago, there was some minor change on our ballot just a few weeks before election day, the effect of which was to delay the sending out of the absentee ballots. Absentee ballots that were sent, for example, to college students around the country got there in more than enough time. Ballots that were sent to students studying abroad did not. K was in Berlin then, and voting in her first presidential election. One of her classmates, not from this area, also didn't get her absentee ballot until a few days before the election, when there wasn't enough time to mail it back before election day. Know what they did? The two girls took their completed and sealed ballots to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, where they promised to get them back in time, putting them in a diplomatic pouch or some such thing. Another reason for me not to trust voting by mail, I guess.
Anyway, here's hoping that it's all over tomorrow, one way or another. The Other Chai, who teaches government and political science, reminded me that it isn't really over until the electoral college actually votes, which I know, but if the outcome is clear cut in each state by tomorrow night, as has happened in every election in my memory except the last two, then we know what the electoral college will do. That's what we need to see.
Back in my life here, my car is in the shop but the part it needs won't be in until later in the week, by which time we'll be in Virginia. In that car. It needs a new switch for the dashboard lights, which the mechanic says we can turn on for now by jiggling the switch. I didn't even know there was a switch, my dashboard lights are just always on. (There's a sensor or something, so that if you pass under a cloud, the dashboard lights come on.) K is subbing here at school today, so we'll just get my car on the way home. Then later on, I have someone coming to take out the loveseat that's up in her room, the one that used to be Shirl's, and has a completely worn to the stuffing arm, and cigarette holes all over it. Yes, a fine piece of furniture. It would cost more to re-upholster than to replace, and we don't need to replace it, since the ILs had at one time given us two more of the same loveseat (but covered in a different fabric), one of which is now in R's place and the other, in my family room, is slated for K, if she wants it. As for me, I want a recliner, but no place for that right now. In time, perhaps. When I get my dog, perhaps.
Anyway, once the loveseat is gone, we may make a very quick run to Ikea, and then K has work cut out for her up in her room. She has no school tomorrow, not where she observes, since it's closed, and not subbing, since we're closed to students. So she'll have the time to vote at her leisure -- it's a short walk to the school where we vote, although I'll do mine on the way to work, so that'll be before seven, I would think -- and get some more straightening out done in her room. R still votes from our address, so will be coming by later in the day; she gets two hours off to vote, and then will hang around for awhile to watch the returns.
As for me, I get to spend tomorrow listening to a keynote speaker, who should probably be home voting someplace, and then sit through a workshop on something I already know about. Fun for me.
WATCHING WIFE SWAP :: ENTRY #1897
READING: Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
