Lou the Election Official: Days of Wonder...and Fright

MY HANDS WERE SLAPPING  the bed crazily when my wife suddenly awoke to shut them down.  My nightmare had surfaced.  Monkeys were popping up at the polling place to stuff ballots or to sneak them out.  Like whack-a-mole, I tried to hit them, slapping feverishly as they hopped around from voting booth to booth.  My wife thankfully broke the spasmodic spell, and saved me from losing to an army of feverish monkeys trying to subvert our election.

When I signed up to become an election official in New Hanover county, North Carolina, no one said a word about monkeys.  Just concerns that people would not show up out of fear they could become COVID infected, or that they would be intimidated by overzealous electioneering from one party or another, or that people would try to vote more than once, that ballot boxes could not be trusted.

The Election Board itself worried about attracting enough applicants like me to work half days or all day for ten dollars an hour to help guide things along.  Turns out they hired me and about 200 other people to staff nine early-voting sites around the county.  Everything from laptop operators registering voters, to external and internal line coordinators to greet and assist voters, to sanitation helpers keeping the voting booths and surroundings safe and clean.  Masks and sanitizers on hand for all who needed or wanted them. 

All election staff wore masks and so did all the voters who stood in lines of up to two hours and entered.  So did the hundreds more who qualified for curbside voting from their cars.

To keep it all above board, the major political parties sent observers to each site.  They did just that, sitting in chairs inside the sites watching, taking notes, and occasionally voicing concerns:  

"My big worry is having a bus drop off dozens of people who never voted before," one observer noted, eyeing the parking lot.  North Carolina does not require voters to have an ID, just other forms of identification tied to their county address.  No dreaded bus has come so far, only 58,000 citizens seeking to have their votes recorded.

Now a week into my post-retirement job as a "Greeter", nearly 45% of eligible county voters have already cast their ballots in person or by absentee mail.   Of the 58,000 cast, about 21,000 came from registered Republican voters, 17,000 from registered Democrats, and a whopping 19,000 from unaffiliated voters.  

Non-party people are the fastest rising group in our county, and throughout North Carolina.  Mail-in ballots are phenomenally on the rise -- so far, 780,000, a quadrupling of those recorded at this juncture in 2016.  The ballots, once counted on election day, could prove to be decisive in what pollsters call a "toss-up" state.

Among the first-time voters stood Miguel, an outwardly shy 18-year-old who I noticed hanging around the voting lines for two days but reluctant to step in.  When he finally did, he said he only voted for president and senator, describing himself as a "non-political" person.  I casually mentioned that the Election Board was still looking for temporary staff and maybe he should look to apply.  A colleague overheard and took him by the arm.  "Follow me," he said, and he did.  The next day Miguel had a job, and by day three he had transformed into a highly courteous and helpful staff member.  When I next saw him, he was walking an older voter back to his car. 

And so it went.  Few problems. Many touching scenes.  Families coming in with their young children, to show them how the voting process works.  Some wore their votes on tee shirts and hats, most kept them inside their heads.  Elderly couples wheeling themselves in, or walking slowly with canes and assistants.  Others meeting neighbors and fellow parishioners, and friends they had not seen in some time.  Voting rights groups moving to doo-wop, salsa and country western songs piped from a parking-lot food truck.  Voters taking selfies, proud of their "I voted" stickers.  A mother and son wearing Biden tees resetting a windblown Trump/Pence sign.

Yet we've had some "issues".  Some voters came because their absentee ballots had been blocked for lack of a witness signature; they were allowed to fix them and submit them provisionally.  A few wondered whether the pre-filled sample ballot they were handed from party workers was the "real" one.  It wasn't, just made to look that way.  My boss, the Chief Judge, came out to remind me that party pols had to stay 50 feet away from the voting lines, and then gave me a measuring tape to mark it off exactly.  She had heard that some pushy pols were encroaching.... 

For more, you might want to check in with Ryuichi Kanari, foreign correspondent for Asahi Shimbun, New York bureau.  He's on the Trump trail again.  His first book in 2017 chronicled conservative American politics in the midwest for Japanese and Korean readers.  He had come to North Carolina and Wilmington to see how things were going down south this time around.  During a lull in the lines, he asked me whether we'd seen more Trump or Biden voters and whether there had been any problems.  

As a non-partisan Election Official, I said there's not much I could tell him on the record.  Not even about my monkey nightmare.

Keep the Faith

HOWEVER THIS ELECTION turns out, one thing is clear.  Positions are hardening, especially for the people who pray for the best because they fear the worst.  They include some of the most God-fearing people I know.  

Some years back, an evangelical family member related how he felt like a societal outsider when it comes to his beliefs and lifestyle.  He believes in the Bible's teachings, often literally, and saw the country as hedonistic and radical in supporting gender and marriage rights, among other issues.  "We're now seen as the abnormal ones," he said, feeling oppressed.  Most of my extended family members might have agreed.

Evangelical Christians -- mainly Protestants  -- make up about one-quarter of U.S. voters, according to the Pew Research Center.  They stood among the strongest supporters of the Trump Republican party in 2016.  Most of them were white Americans, which cannot be overlooked.

Whether Trump attracts them in 2020 is iffy.  Christianity Today, the magazine founded by tele-evangelist Billy Graham, backed Trump's impeachment in a December 2019 editorial, saying "he abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath."  It urged "evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record...to remember who you are and whom you serve."  Namely, the Lord.

Other evangelicals, like hard-liner James Dobson, don't agree.  Dobson urges followers to overlook what he describes as "frivolous personality characteristics" and vote Trump all the way.  His latest open letter to politician Newt Gingrich and 799,999 other Christians pushes the right buttons to lure them to his fold.

And then there's the son of Billy, who sees a storm coming.  "I believe the socialists in this country would like to shut our churches," warns Franklin Graham, evoking visions of his Dad's fiery Red Scare messages in the 1950s.  "Our country is in trouble...thank God for Donald Trump."

So the church is split, at least from the perspective of multi-millionaire evangelical point men. Even so, Christianity Today just last month reported that the man it said should be impeached may still claim the majority of white evangelical votes.  

Good News Blues

THE GOOD NEWS is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are good and decent people.  I know this because friends say I am one.  So good that I get teased for too loosely defending a 72-year-old in our senior basketball league.  "You gotta make him feel you," they cry.  "Play him tough and hard."  

We haven't played ball since last February.  Meantime, the proverbial bad news has come down.  Word is that some of my court critics are also Covid cryers.  They rail about losing their rights by being advised to wear a mask.  "I can do whatever I want.  This is America," they pronounce.  

A few believe that most of the Covid deaths would have happened anyway because the people were old, already sick, or just plain unlucky.  "Anyone who dies becomes a Covid case," they say.  "Besides, if I haven't caught it yet, I'm not going to."  

Good and decent people in many ways.  Yet wrong.  Look at Wisconsin, where friends and family live, and where I grew up.  Nine months in.  Guidance ignored.  Cases rising. Testing and contact tracing falling way behind. Winter coming.

"We know what's making it worse here," Susan Sanvidge, 74, a graphic designer, told a reporter in Oshkosh.  "It's the schools, and it's the bars.  And half of the people think Covid is a hoax anyway."  Others, including health officers, attribute the rising number of cases to cookouts, weddings, birthday parties, and indoor bowling leagues.  Health guidelines ignored, the virus downplayed. 

In Florida, a group of unmasked men and women stormed a Target in Ft. Lauderdale, flouting the store's policy and ridiculing customers who did wear masks.  Making a political, not health, statement: "We're not going to take it anymore."

And now, a month before the election, we're informed the White House and Senate is infected.  With the virus.  Godspeed to us all.  

Image: Yale.edu

"Halt Die Ohren Steif" & Other Reminders

RAGE IS SAD.  The new book by Bob Woodward -- aka "one of the Watergate guys" who documented President Richard Nixon's crimes back in the 1970s -- isn't so much news as it is an alarm.  It immediately reminded me of my father's advice when I left for the Army in 1971: " Halt die Ohren Steif,"  he said, using a German idiom for staying alert and keeping spirits up. You need to see what's coming.

Woodward's written about US Presidents for decades and knows one when he meets one.  Unlike all the others, Donald Trump is not one, he writes, a man who's shown himself to be unfit for the Presidency and dangerous for the country.  This from an ex-Navy man, lifelong Republican, and eminent reporter who had 18 interviews with Mr. Trump, most of which were recorded word for word.  

His book Rage made me sad and mad at the same time.  But mostly sad because it is hard to see how Americans can come together to form a more perfect union when we are led by a person of such deceit and incompetence.  He's not like the guy at the sports bar bragging about this and that trying to show how smart and tough he is.  He's the leader of the United States of America, yet couldn't even get to first base with all the softball questions Woodward threw at him. 

Instead, we hear a man whose principles boil down to blaming others for his mistakes, taking credit for things he did not do, and lying to achieve his aims.  He is charmed when ruthless North Korean dictator Kim refers to him as "Your Excellency" in a series of "love letters", and he is elated with all the perks of a presidency, right down to "doing whatever I want" when he wants.  No checks and balances in his world. 

Rage is Woodward's second book on the Trump Presidency, the first being called Fear.  A thread running through both -- alongside the disturbing picture of a dysfunctional president --  is the reduction of many decisions to money.    Mr. Trump rants that we are being played for suckers in our support of NATO in Europe, and South Korea in Asia, ignoring security aspects, and raves about tax cuts for the richest of Americans that place an even heavier financial burden on our country's debt.  He rails against "cheating" China while his flailing administration has no option but to buy masks and medical supplies from it.   

Now on the eve of a national election, the promises and threats become more urgent.  We are told there's not only a vaccine coming soon against the Covid virus -- which Trump still ashamedly downplays despite nearly 200,000 deaths --  but also a rushed Supreme Court nominee to interpret justice for the next half century.  Not to forget warnings that we are headed for a rigged election and national "insurrection" unless he wins.  

The gambits, threats and propaganda might work. For awhile. 

They did in 1972.  In late October, leaders headlined that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam even though soldiers like me at the Pentagon knew it wasn't.  Two weeks later in November, Nixon won reelection in a landslide.  He lasted until the summer of 1974 when he was forced to resign by his own Republican party.  Peace did not come, the war raged on, not ending until the spring of 1975.  

Weeks later I left the Army, a bit older, a little wiser. I learned my father's words rang true back then, just as they do now.

America Reboot

MY DAUGHTER TOLD ME the other day that 2020 should be deleted.  Malware: COVID-19, and America's haphazard response to it.  Time to clean the slate and start the rebuild.

Hard to argue that America does not need a reboot big time. The reboot challenge goes back more than a decade, and today it's entered again into the political discourse of 2020.

But what to delete and which updates to install?  As an ex-pat who spent a quarter of his life in Europe, what I think may pale in comparison to how "real" Americans see things.  But that's the rub:  just why do we so boldly categorize each other into one camp or another?  Who and what is a "real" American?  Who stands with whom?   

I took a long look at our family's "hard drive":  Throughout our extended family of more than 100 people, the social, political and religious views are all over the map. Literally.  Some of us live in the south, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, and Virginia.  Others up north in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Wisconsin.  Still others out west in Utah, Arizona, and California. And a few in Germany, Italy, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, China....and Afghanistan. 

Our collective roots stretch back to five continents. We're racially black, brown, yellow, white and mixed in between.  We're culturally diverse, musically from country to rap and back through gospel and blues to salsa and oom-pa-pa. We're religiously and philosophically surrounded by Jesuits, Priests, Pastors, Rabbis, Imams, humanists and agnostics.  Our neighbors and friends tend to be like us, except in a few cases where those like us are in the minority.  

Even so, we're often on different pages over issues of law and order and the execution of justice, whether"blue" or "black" lives matter more, whether immigrants should be counted in the nation's census, whether to have a post office equipped to deliver ballots, whether patriotism means standing or kneeling, whether to shield ourselves and others during a known pandemic, whether the country's history we were taught is actually the history we should learn, whether the events we follow are fake or factual.  And so much more.

My thoughts expressed through =JustUS began four years ago, when I was still in Europe viewing America from a different lens.  The hateful, propaganda politics of 2016 were frightening. They triggered in me ramifications of the 1930s machine that targeted my parents and their families in Lower Saxony, Germany. To many of them, I have come to learn, the propaganda somehow rang true.  They ended up living through 12 years of mostly hell, even though it was made to look like heaven at the outset.

America's politics of 2020 are even more frightening, divisive and threatening.  A democracy that other countries once looked up to and sought to emulate is on the bend. Countries block Americans from entering for fear of becoming infected, haters spin conspiracies once confined to looney bins, and communities ask the President of the country to stay away for fear of the worst. 

Especially for families like my own whose diversity cannot be hidden, we need a reboot to elevate the goodness of America. To trash the bugs, scams and viruses infecting our lives. 

Reboot art by Linda Woods, available on FineArtAmerica.  Photo of faces, Aron Wedekind