Yo! I Voted

When I arrived at Bannockburn Elementary School at 6:45 am today, I was the fourth person in line to vote in Maryland’s presidential primary. By the time I left 10 minutes after the doors opened at 7 am, the line of white people—most about my age or older, with a few early-rising younger folks mixed in—extended all the way down the hallway outside the voting room and into the school’s front lobby.

Diversity is not my neighborhood’s strong suit. Not that Maryland election district/precinct 07-02—per the voter information card I’ve kept in my wallet since its issue date on April 19, 1996—is lily-white. There are some African American families, but residents of darker hues more often are ethic Asians of one lineage or another who probably are university professors or federal employees or scientists at the National Institutes of Health.

It’s not by any means an ostentatiously wealthy neighborhood, but it’s comfortably middle-class in a location desirable enough that Lynn and I are clearly the riffraff. If we hadn’t bought our house cheap (relatively speaking) during the middle years of the Clinton administration and subsequently maintained a sufficient bank account from salary and investments to pay the state and county’s ruinous taxes, we would not be residents of ZIP code 20816.

Even now, I often feel like an imposter on my own street. I’ll be out working in the yard on a Saturday afternoon, one of the few locals who actually mows his own grass, and I’ll half-expect enforcers from a homeowners association I hadn’t previously known existed stride purposefully up my driveway, toss my ass into a Mercedes-Benz paddy wagon and throw me in a briar patch in some socioeconomic area more appropriate to my job description, economic ambition, market savvy and heredity.

But the thing is, on election days, I feel like I’m with my peeps. Mine is the kind of neighborhood in which yard signs for Democratic candidates are the rule and lawn advertisements for Republicans so profoundly the exception that I frankly fear just a little bit for the apostates. For example, a house up the street and around the corner from ours has a Trump sign in the yard and another in the window. I look at those signs and think a couple of different things. One is that the home's occupants surely are NOT illustrative of the oft-cited talking point that, supposedly at least, more people in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District (of which my precinct is a part) have advanced degrees than do residents of any other congressional district in the nation. (Not that I myself have an advanced degree—yet another reason my eyes stay peeled for that paddy wagon.) The other thing I think when I see a Trump (or, in past years, a Romney, Bush, or whatever the name of the GOP standard-bearer) sign anywhere along the not-so-mean-streets of my precinct is, “It’s lucky for those people that most of the liberals around here don’t own or even like guns." Elsewise, I’m envisioning a bullet hole between the ‘T’ and the ‘rump,’ and maybe a puncture or two in the tires of that honking-big SUV out front.

(Not that mayhem is unknown in these parts. Why, in the heat of swim-meet season, I’ve seen ENTIRE ROLLS of toilet paper carpet-bombing the homes of kids whose success at the breaststroke has embittered bathroom tissue-wielding ruffians from rival swim clubs. Indulge me one brief aside here. One neighborhood team is called the Merrimack Maniacs. Our next-door neighbors, back when their girls were younger and themselves Maniacs, sported a bumper sticker on one of their cars that bore the team’s name, illustrated by a cartoon drawing of two swim cap-clad crazoids. I told the dad one day that every time I saw that bumper sticker I thought of Charlton Heston’s character in The Planet of the Apes, at the moment when he sees the Statue of Liberty rising out of the sand in the Forbidden Zone and realizes he’s been on Earth all along—only far in the future, after humankind has blown itself up and allowed the apes to evolve and take over. “You MANIACS!” Heston shouts—indicting his own species with a fervor he’d later, in real life, reserve for anyone advocating gun control. Still, I have to say, TPing yards seems a far cry from provoking a nuclear holocaust and ushering in a simian master race.)

Where was I? Oh, so, yes, my neighborhood is about as reliably Democratic in voter registration as they come. Probably even more so—though I don’t know the numbers and am too lazy to seek them out—than is my deep Blue state as a whole, where the Democratic “edge” in voter registration is more like a chasm, at about two-to-one. (In Maryland, a sparsely populated and heavily Republican east and west sandwich a voter-rich Democratic center that includes such population centers as Baltimore, Prince George’s County, and my county, Montgomery.) So, when I arrive at the elementary school on election mornings and stand in line to cast my vote, I always feel good about the company I’m keeping and the general results I can expect my precinct-mates to produce—not necessarily voting for “my” candidates in every instance, but at least for my party.

Although, don’t get me wrong. Lynn and I still, after two decades walking among them, find most Bethesdans (with notable exceptions) to be incredibly snooty and self-absorbed. It isn’t like my fellow voters are looking up from their cell phones, where they monitor the stock market and studiously avoid any facial display that might be misconstrued as goodwill, in order to greet me with a hearty, “Howya doin’, Champ? Great to see ya!” But knowing that most of my neighbors are likely to vote the “right” way, by my lights, forgives a lot of grievances.

And the poll workers, at least, always are cheery and helpful, which further enhances the experience for me. That they are donating their time for no reward beyond facilitating the democratic process makes me appreciate them that much more. Especially given that, in keeping with their trademark assholicness, many Bethesdans tend to be in a Big Damn Hurry and take unkindly to things like standing in line and having to countenance a verification process that can take as long as 90 seconds. Anyway, by the time I’ve secured my bilingual “I Voted”/”Yo voteˊ (literally, I think, “Yo! I Voted”) sticker and affixed it to my shirt, I’m feeling about as optimistic about the world as I ever do.

Which isn’t, of course, very optimistic at all. I mean, global warming is still happening, and movie-astronaut Charlton Heston wasn’t wrong about the self-destructive stupidity of the human race. But, all in all, I find voting to be a delightful way to start the day. Just having the opportunity to vote, and having that vote be counted, is a great thing about America at a time when there’s a lot not to like about this country—starting with, but hardly limited to, the utter lack of civility in political discourse and refusal to compromise in order to get done anything that desperately needs doing. (And yes, I'm mindful of the fact that this entire post is about how I never vote for Republicans now—given the intolerant, science-hating and theocracy-favoring cesspool the GOP has become. But I have voted for individual Republican candidates in the past, and I might well do so again if any would seem to prioritize the needs of the planet. Beyond that, though, I plaintively ask: Can’t folks on both sides of the aisle just give a little and find some common ground? To invoke the existential question of the late police-brutality victim and PCP philosopher Rodney King, why can’t everybody just get along?)

But voting in Montgomery County is, of course, a funhouse-mirror experience. I’ve walked away from that elementary school feeling that maybe, just maybe, John Kerry actually might beat George W. Bush in the presidential race. I’ve been stunned when my state has elected Republican governors twice on my watch, even though I hadn’t been much impressed by the Democratic candidate’s campaign in either case. Fairly often, this county is like Las Vegas in a way: What happens here on Election Day stays here, results-wise—a delightfully sinful Democratic secret on a big Republican day.

But today is a bit different here, in that it’s the day of the two major political parties’ primaries, not the general election. My precinct homies—the vast majority of them fellow Democrats—might not in aggregate favor my Democrat of choice for the 8th congressional district seat, or for the US Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Barbara Mikulski, or for the presidency of these United States. History suggests, however, that, given those voter-registration numbers and Maryland’s prevailing progressive bent, whoever the party faithful elect today, locally and statewide, will be the next 8th District congressperson and US senator come November. (I expect the state also to provide another win for Hillary Clinton, who may or may not win in November but is certain to be the party’s nominee for president.)

So, for me, there’s a lot to like on any given Election Day. There’s the fact that I live in a democracy that, whatever its abundant problems and corruptions, still guarantees its citizens the right to vote. (Not that there aren’t always efforts afoot to disenfranchise people for various nefarious reasons; I did just write the word “corruptions.”) There’s the fact that my vote counts, whether or not the final tally is what I’d like it to be. There’s the fact that, when I walk through that elementary school’s front door, the chance is close to nil that anyone among the queued will be overheard inveighing against abortion or thanking God for the opportunity to stop evil liberals from further debasing our great nation.

And not insignificantly, given my psychic fears, there’s that happy illusion, for the half-hour or so that I’m on premises at my polling place, that my fellow Bethesdans are just, well, gosh, A-OK. Not at all the kind of folks who might one day smash my cheap old boom box as it blares classic rock, separate me from my nearby lawnmower, and spirit my underachieving, low-net worth butt off to a waiting briar patch a safe distance down the road.