My political science instructor at IU Southeast once remarked that she regretted the passing of traditions like that of the election night party, with people clustered near the television (before that, the radio) awaiting election results and debating politics.
This was 1979, mind you.
Now I'm finding myself in similar territory. For ten years, we've walked round the corner two short blocks and voted at S. Ellen Jones Elementary School, bright and early on Tuesday morning. Now the walk will be all the way to the library -- good for my daily exercise regimen, but bad for Mr. and Mrs. Confidential's record of voting as a team prior to her departure for work.
I suppose we might have walked to the clerk's office last week and voted as a unit, or gotten absentee ballots and filled them out over coffee at the dining room table. Such automated, new-age voting exercises will become the next tradition, at least for those relative few who bother voting in the first place. For now, you'll need to allow me a few election cycles to mourn the passing of old ways, which might be characterized as more communal -- like those folks gathered around the television.
In a few years, when I'm voting by means of the successor to my iPhone, or a microchip identity app implanted in the skull, at least have the grace not to remind me I wrote these words.
Vote center locations in New Albany:
New Albany-Floyd County Public Library
New Albany Housing Authority
Pineview Government Center
Grace Lutheran Church
4-H Fairgrounds
Christ’s Community Church
Vote center locations outside New Albany:
Tunnel Hill Christian Church, Georgetown
Georgetown Christian Church, Georgetown
John Jones Automotive, Greenville
Floyds Knobs Community Club, Lafayette
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3 comments:
Grace, I have not.
Old White Guy
Clark: Since this is Aunt Bethany’s 80th Christmas, I think she should lead us in the saying of Grace.
Aunt Bethany (to Uncle Lewis): What, dear?
Nora: Grace!
Aunt Bethany: Grace? She passed away thirty years ago.
Sorry, but when I see "grace", this immediately pops into my head. Not sure what that says about me, but I'm good with it.
I would love to be wrong, but I think the percentage of people voting will drop with these new centers. They will become an immediate impediment to the casual voter; especially those with a busy schedule or who encounter some unplanned event in their day that changes their plans.
This means that the pub is closer than the polling place. The former is more effective anyway. I've never come out of a polling place excited about anything.
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