My spouse and I have cast around for what more we can do to get people to the polls on election day. I intend to be driving voters to the polls in Northern Virginia. My spouse intends to open our home to care for children of other would be voters.
We consider ourselves lucky. We live in ultra-safe, electorally speaking, Montogomery County, Maryland. Not only will Obama win our state handily, but Van Hollen will cruise through an easy victory as well. We live a quarter of a mile from our polling place. Voting is quick and easy. We're usually among the first there. There is never a line, there is never difficulty finding a parking spot. We have motor voter. Everything works out well. But this year is different. We are very active in our work for the Obama campaign, having donated more time and money than ever before and perhaps more than was prudent. My sense is that voters in our area want a referendum on Bush's tenure and the future of our country. So we suspect turn-out will be high.
My spouse is a stay at home parent and our son is a Monday-Wednesday-Friday preschooler. My sons Tuesday ice skating lessons at the county rink have ended for this current session so they will be at home all day. We can vote, always a family affair, early and be done with it.
Not everyone is so logistically lucky. There may be lines, there may be a challenge at the polls, there may be only one parent, there may be all of the above. So we are opening our house to all the children of the local International Moms Club until the polls close on Tuesday November 4th. My spouse is past President of the chapter, so everyone knows us and our home. At most there could be children from 40 families at our townhouse. Even McCain voters can drop off their kids (although there aren't many of those or at least many who will admit it in these parts).
Why would we do such a thing? Personally, as scientists, we've moved around alot and search out community where we can find it. Knowing how precious that sense of belonging is, we foster it when we can. This tendency for communities to spontaneously atomize is ever-present and like the underlying biochemsitry of life we must continually contend with entropy.
To our minds, this building of community is what the Obama campaign has been all about. We feel it in the way the campaign is run. The way volunteers such as us are taken in to the fold. The way the campaign's rhetoric seeks to bridge the gap between us and us. We would feel like slackers if we saw all this and were not moved to reproduce it on our scale. As someone once said, "We are the change we seek".