For almost 50 years I have voted for Presidents in person, on Election Day at duly assigned polling places, except for the very first time and again, today.
Thanks to an inconvenient birth year, I couldn’t vote in a Presidential Election until I was 23, the voting age being 21 at the time of the previous election when I had been 19. By then, I was a Division Officer on a U.S. Navy destroyer thousands of miles from home, necessitating voting with a military absentee ballot. Several junior officers had been out that cycle, dressed in civvies, canvassing civilian neighborhoods for George McGovern. It was lawful so long as we stuck to our own time and didn’t campaign as officers. But a lot of higher ranking officers on the base were in the bag for Nixon and missed no opportunity to show disapproval of our off base politicking. I sent my absentee ballot back home to Missouri, which McGovern failed to carry, along with most of the rest of the country.
That pattern of disappointed expectations repeated itself more often than not in the years afterward. Sure, the good guys took the White House with a win by Jimmy Carter, two by Bill Clinton and two by Barrack Obama. But the cost of those feel good moments was an America under the Republican yoke after GOP wins: one by Nixon, two by Reagan, one by Bush 41, two by Bush 43 and, the worst, one by Trump. I donated to most of those Democratic winners, and the losers, too, and campaigned for many of them. With Ms. Left at my side, I cast election day ballots at polling places in four different states in different regions of the country, cycle after cycle.
Until today. Last night we completed our Missouri Absentee Ballots. I mailed them today.
It was a straightforward two side ballot for Statewide offices, the White House, our Congressional seat, a long list of judicial retentions and a few state questions, some of which amounted to Republicans at the Capitol trying to trip up Democratic leaders in my City. I voted for the two propositions to raise taxes and against the rest, for a straight Democratic ticket and to retain all the judges. Doing all of this felt decidedly weird while sitting at the island in my kitchen. I’ve realized, as well, that I’ve never experienced any anxiety about whether my ballot would be counted, until now, as I must wait for days to follow the tracking and receive confirmation.
All of that upheaval of normalcy and extra anxiety is Donald Trump’s fault, of course. His tenure has certainly rained even worse disruption, anxiety, fear and even death upon millions of other Americans. But, if my city weren’t in the middle of a Trump induced Covid-19 hellhole, it could have been perfectly reasonable to vote in person, just as I did in the Primary, back in August.
But Trump’s failures didn’t just change the mechanics of my vote. He has also changed the substance of my voting. Although I’ve always been a loyal vote for Democrats seeking the White House, that hasn’t always been entirely the case down ballot. Over the years I have voted for a few down ballot Republicans. Today’s ballot wasn’t the first time I voted a straight ticket, either. But what has changed is that I didn’t spend a nanosecond thinking I ought to split my ticket.
Case in point — I haven’t the slightest idea who the candidates for Lt. Governor are. In past elections, as soon as I noticed such a situation, I would do the minuscule keyboard wrangling necessary to, at least superficially, inform myself. Or, further back, I’d grab a LWV pamphlet or something. This time, I inked the oval for the Democrat, because that was all I needed to know. I am now a straight ticket Democratic voter and won’t give any Republican so much as the courtesy of getting to know them if I already don’t. They are dead to me. This is new for me and feels decidedly persistent.