A Cartoony Election

I printed two political cartoons from the New York Times this morning, cartoons that pretty much reflect where I am at right now. Tony Auth shows a wild pack of people speeding toward a finish line marked Nov. 4. It is a mob reaching out to end their misery, to burn out their obsession with this ever-lasting campaign. The other cartoon was by Ben Sargent. There’s a guy safe and dry inside a building; he carries a picnic basket that is mark AMERICAN VOTING SYSTEM. There is something 19^th century about his costume. (Just for your information, the law to vote on the first Tuesday in November was passed in 1843, when the country was an agrarian society.) In the doorway is another man dressed in rain gear and buffeted by a roaring storm outside. Water splashes in around him. Above him is the word TURNOUT. That man comments to the other, “You-uh-haven’t seen a weather report, I take it…” In short, voting on Tuesday is not going to be a picnic and you don’t need a weatherman to know the flood of people could overwhelm the system.

Auth’s cartoon speaks to the nervous exhaustion and anxiety so many of us feel at this point of the process. We just want to get it all behind us and to move forward to the next hurdles we have to negotiate. Of even greater concern is the possible turnout. If the early voting is any indication, it could be as high as 80%, which I’ll have to see to believe. But if it is that high I suspect there is no way everyone who wants to vote on Tuesday will be able to. Then what happens? People won’t vote because the system is stupid and antiquated? Do we say tough luck, better luck next time? How fair is that?

It appears that the early vote in 32 states took care of 25% to 30% of the vote nationally. It took days; there were long lines and 4 to 6 hours waits in some places.

As an ex-boss of mine was fond of saying, if I were king I’d make these changes…We’d vote over a three day weekend, or even better, over the space of a week, and we’d dump the Electoral College nonsense and make it a simple referendum. And there is nothing wrong with paper ballots with some kind of scanner device. We need to make it as easy as possible rather than a briar patch to crawl through. Personally, my wife and I did mail-in ballots. Took us ten minutes to mark the ballot and put it in an envelope.