Early voting

The lines were long. And longer. And longer than that.

Among the many, many unique aspects that we’ll remember about 2020, early voting on Saturday with my daughter Natalie is one of them. And like a lot of things in 2020, it had some unusual twists and turns. Start here: My daughter, a freshman at Siena College in suburban Albany, registered to vote this summer and made it very clear to us that she wanted to come back home to vote early – as soon as possible -- in this election. She has been up at Siena for more than two months now and has not been home once since her arrival in Loudonville. We’ve been up there (especially me) for several short visits – it’s an easy drive from our house – to provide her with additional snacks for her dorm room, clothes, things she forgot, a new cell phone after her screen shattered, and any other excuse we could find to make the trip up there. We miss her. What’s another couple round-trips on another fall weekend?

So anyway, Saturday, October 24, was the first day of early voting. It worked well with all of our schedules. Natalie had swim practice (she’s on the Siena team) in the morning. My youngest son James and I piled into my cluttered Subaru for the relatively short drive (1 hour, 20 minutes) up to Loudonville. We picked her up, went to a local Salvation Army thrift store so she could shop for clothes for a Halloween outfit, and then started the trip south to the nearest polling place in Dutchess County – Rhinebeck town hall. Of course, there were multiple Stewart’s shops stops along the way on the roundtrip (coffee, gas, snacks, bathroom, etc.). When we got to Rhinebeck, the line along the quaint village streets was long, snaking into another neighborhood. James was grumpy. He didn’t want to wait; can’t blame him too much. So, we decided to drive home to Hyde Park, drop him off, and seek a polling place in Poughkeepsie. Little did we know that Rhinebeck “long” was nothing at all!

We dropped James off, Natalie had an emotional reunion with the beloved dogs, and then we drove into the City of Poughkeepsie, to the board of elections on Cannon Street. Lines snaked through the city as far as the eye could see. Screw THAT. Let’s go to Boardman Road, Town of Poughkeepsie, and check out that polling place. Same deal. Long lines as far as you could imagine, cars parked in all manner of disarray on the grass, and the side of Boardman Road. Screw it, we’re waiting, there are no more options. Now Natalie was grumpy. The afternoon was getting chilly. Folks coming out of the library polling place (what a beautiful public library! Only a nerd like me can get excited about such a place, a relatively new addition to the Poughkeepsie Public Library District!) mentioned that their wait was four hours. Holy hanging chad, it was 3:45 p.m. A four-hour wait approaches my bedtime (not quite, but close). I mentioned to Natalie that maybe we should try Rhinebeck again on Sunday, on the way back to Siena. She bristled. She had homework on Sunday; she needed to get back on Sunday for a Zoom call. She wanted to vote now. Good for her. She could have bailed, and at one point she was questioning if it was worth it. But the kid wanted to vote for the first time. She turned 18 in July. This was important to her. And so, we hunkered down in the parking lot line. To wait to vote. Again, this was important to her, it mattered to her; and so, it mattered to me too.

Clearly, it was important to a shit-ton more people than her too. Wow. Because I’m a numbers geek, I walked around that beautiful new library and counted how many folks were in front of us. Not including those already in the building? I counted 262 humans. Wowsers. Eventually, her mood got better. She’s a generally good-natured kid. She put on her XL Siena swimming and diving sweatshirt to stay warm. I fetched some gloves from the car, as well as a notebook and some flash cards for her to study for an upcoming bio exam. An extra layer of flannel for me and a winter hat. It really wasn’t that cold (low-50s) but when you are standing outside for three hours as darkness approaches, it gets chilly. Yes. It took us about three hours before we finally got into that beautiful new library (did I mention what a great library it is!) to cast our ballots. I’ve been voting for close to 40 years. I’ve never missed a general election (I can’t vote in primaries, because I’m not registered with a political party, I’m an “NOP” in election official vernacular). This felt special, this felt meaningful. And like so much else in 2020, this is something – a day in the life – that we’ll never forget. Natalie voted and seemed happy to do it. I voted and I’m definitely happy that future long lines will not include me. We all should rest assured that our democracy, flawed, and perhaps reeling as it is, seems to be alive and well. Rock the vote, people, no matter how long it takes. That’s what we did.