Vote early and often

Yesterday I was a poll worker (and not, as my daughter-in-law’s mother thought, a pole dancer) here in Cherokee County once again. Although I served at the Macedonia precinct last November, this time I was assigned to the Dixie precinct, which is called that not out of some lingering allegiance to the old Confederacy but because a dirt track called Dixie Speedway where stock cars race is nearby. Altogether, Cherokee County is divided into 44 precincts for its 214,346 residents.

The turnout was light and there were only two items on the ballot:

1. Should Cherokee County allow alcohol sales on Sunday?
2. Should the existing one-cent Special-Purpose Local-Option Sales Tax designated to be used for maintaining existing schools and building new ones (E-SPLOST for short, as in Education Special-Purpose Local-Option Sales Tax) be extended for ten more years?

I’ll tell you how I voted.

I voted NO on the Sunday alcohol sales, not because I am a teetotaling prude who isn’t willing to let other people have a little fun and the freedom to do what they please but because, well, here’s the way I see it: If our local drinking/drunk population is either so financially strapped or so perennially looped that they can neither afford nor stay upright long enough to hie themselves over to their local neighborhood package store on a Saturday and purchase enough demon rum hard stuff libations of the bubbly sort to last them until Monday, things are far worse in this country than any of us thought. Besides, package store owners are an overworked bunch and deserve at least one day off each week like everybody else.

I voted YES on the E-SPLOST because, well, just because. When my children were in school they were the beneficiaries of the foresight of previous voters, and I would like to do my part to help provide the best possible education for future generations of Cherokee County schoolchildren.

Next year we will have at least three and possibly even five elections (if runoffs are necessary), including a presidential preference primary in March, a Republican and Democratic primary to choose the respective parties’ candidates in July, and the general election for President, Senators, Congressional Representatives, and I don’t know what all, in November.

I promise you this, my fellow citizens. Unless I am in a hospital, a jail, a cemetery, or otherwise unavoidably detained, I promise you that I will continue to be a pole dancer poll worker to the best of my ability each and every time the opportunity arises.

May God bless the United States of America.


[Editor's note. This just in. With 100% of the precincts reporting, Sunday alcohol sales were approved by a two-to-one margin (66 per cent to 34 per cent), and the School Sales Tax was also approved by almost the same margin (63 per cent to 37 perent). The sad part is that only about 6,000 people went to the polls in Cherokee County yesterday (I’m including the cities of Canton and Woodstock), compared to more than 40,000 who participated in the November 2010 election and more than 93,000 who participated in the 2008 election when we were selecting a new President. I guess the rest of the populace didn’t care one way or the other whether liquor was sold or taxes were continued or children were educated. --RWP]

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away...

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, my nearly 70 years, my almost 840 months, my over 25,000 days of living on this planet of ours, I was a poll worker at an election precinct. I was not, as alleged by my daughter-in-law’s mother, a poll dancer. It’s a play on words, get it? Poll dancer/pole dancer? I think she was joking. I pray to God (with apologies to Snowbrush) that she was joking.

To become a poll worker, all I had to do was fill out an application back in August, submit it to our county’s Board of Elections, be accepted, be assigned to one of the county’s 44 precincts, and attend a half-day of training at the county office building in October. I was fortunate enough to be assigned to the precinct in which I vote, so I didn’t have far to drive on election day.

It turned out to be a long day. I had set my alarm for 4:50 a.m. because 6:00 a.m. was the time we had been told to arrive at the precinct. However, I awoke awaked awakened woke up opened my eyes at 3:15 a.m. and never shut them again. Shortly after 6:00 a.m., we raised our right hands and swore or affirmed certain things and went right to work following the laminated procedures so that the polls could open at 7:00 a.m. for the voters waiting in line. And all over Georgia, in 159 counties and over 2900 precincts, other people were doing the same things. In all 50 states, lots of other people were doing the same things.

Nearly 1150 persons voted in our precinct on Tuesday, and I knew only about 25 of them personally. The rest were complete strangers to me. The county provided us with various 21st-century electronic devices (scanners, computer data bases, touch screens) to help us carry out our assigned tasks. By “us” I mean two groups, the seven persons who were assigned to our precinct and all of the poll workers in all of the other precincts. During the day I had the pleasure of helping four new U.S. citizens who hailed from Brazil, Australia, Ireland, and Vietnam vote in an American election.

The polls closed at 7:00 p.m. and our work ended around 8:00 p.m., 14 hours after we had raised our right hands and 17 hours after I had started my day. I drove home and slept the sleep of the just.

It was a wonderful day. It was a memorable day. I would do it again in a heartbeat, and I plan to. For once, I had served my community instead of expecting my community to serve me. Some of us are old enough to remember having heard President John F. Kennedy say something about that at the end of his inaugural address in 1961.

Don’t tell anybody, but I actually felt like dancing.