If you have voted already, you don’t have to read this. If you haven’t, weren’t planning to, or have doubts as to whether you should, please follow me. For the first time in five elections, I am not mailing my ballot in. I am walking to the polling place around the block from my house. I am going to stand in line. In my hands will be a cup of Fellini’s dark roast coffee with cream and sugar, a banana, a copy of Edna Lewis’s “In Pursuit of Flavor”, and my ballot guide with my selections checked off.
I am going to dress comfortably, wear comfortable shoes, and be as excited at the polling place as an 18-year-old in front of Best Buy at 3:30 am, waiting for iPhone version 5. If there are people waiting in line, I am going to smile at them, and engage in conversation if we can. And maybe, hopefully, we will laugh together. And if the line is way too long, I’m going to double that energy.
This election, this time around, I want not only to feel my vote, I want to enjoy my voting. I want to express love for my ballot. Before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, note that I’m just as cynical over this election as I have been during previous elections. Maybe now more so after being over the Moon for Barack Obama in 2008.
But I am sober now. I have had my faith shaken by state and national politics so much that you could fill me with salt. But that cynicism is not going to stop me from voting to re-elect Obama and Biden. On balance, with the NDAA and drone aircraft warfare aside, President Obama has done plenty for health care, women, gay people, the elderly, immigrants, alternative energy and the economy to deserve re-election. And I want them to come back and do more. Let’s not forget Obama put Justices Elena Kagan and Sandra Sotomayor on the Supreme Court bench, and could replace possible retiring justices like Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the future.