I got up early to go vote in a presidential election in my town of Ferndale, MI for the first time since 2004. No, I haven’t been slacking… I was in Japan for both of Obama’s runs, and dutifully filled in my absentee ballot both times. I vote in every election, even the smallest local elections, where turnout is in the hundreds.
Today, it’s a cloudy, cool day. It finally feels like fall after two weeks of unseasonably warm weather (unless this is the new normal, thanks to climate change.) I put on my hat and walked the half-mile to my polling place, at the newly-remodeled district library.
I’m very lucky to live in a place like Ferndale. We’re a compact little city of five square miles and 20,000 people bordering the great city of Detroit. We’re a former automotive bedroom community, almost all of our houses built in the 1920s to 40s, cozy houses on little city lots with gigantic trees. We’re extremely liberal, the epicenter of the Michigan LGBTQ community. We have high property taxes but great community services, and we like it that way. We have plenty of polling places for everyone and there’s never a wait.
Until today. I’d never seen a line out the door before. Inside, a traffic jam, as the line of people waiting to put their ballots through the optical scanner snaked around and through the line of people waiting to sign in.
We have straight-ticket voting in Michigan. I know I should have, to save time and move the line faster. But I took such great pleasure in marking the individual circles for the candidates. Just as when I voted for the pioneering Barack Obama for the first time, I got a little chill voting for the equally pioneering Hillary Clinton. I enjoyed voting for Craig Covey, Ferndale’s former mayor, for county sheriff. I enjoyed every school board race, every university race, and the ballot proposal for regional transportation. I checked and double-checked, watched the number tick up by one, and got my sticker. One hour into voting, I was 219th at my precinct… and, to repeat, in some smaller elections we don’t get to that number of voters all day. The line was long as I left and it’ll be totally crazy after work tonight. We need early voting in Michigan. First, though, we need to kick the GOP majority out of our legislature and the governor’s chair.
My wife can’t vote. She’s an immigrant and has not gone through the citizenship process. I voted for her. I voted for my two young cousins, adopted from Guatemala, who I don’t want to grow up in a country full of xenophobic and racist hatred. I voted for myself, for my own sense of being a part of history. Again.
I walked home, crunching through thick carpets of leaves, kicking them up to be blown by the wind. I’m going to go paint my mom’s garage (interior) to take my mind off of the waiting. I’ll come home tonight and be plugged into Daily Kos.
All together now…