There was a vote heldyesterday, and they called it a “General Election,” though we did not recognize the General Officer for whom we voted. There were some startling results in the voting and some others that were not. Considering the social tumults in process outside the polling station, it evoked all sorts of emotion. We actually went a voted In Person.
We thought we would outline what happened here in the Commonwealth as we attempted to be compliant with the Commonwealth of Virginia. Let’s slow it down just a little bit, since there are still some echoes from the election four years ago. People are still talking about that one, and we thought we would reprise tradition.
Virginia has been gentle with our voting since our first move in 1986. They have a process the electoral officials like to call “Absentee-in-Person” voting. We enjoy participating in the conundrum at the Registrar’s Office. It actually makes a certain sense. There has been a multi-week eligibility in our state to cast our ballots before Election Day. I got used to stopping by the Registrar’s office on the third floor of the County Building over on Wilson Boulevard shortly after early voting starts. The strategy evolved over years. I would let the system get organized and then appear sometime in the second week of early voting. I would show my driver’s License, accept my ballot for marking in the conference room adjacent to the Registrar’s official office. Then I would mark it up, hand it back to the petite lady representing the power of the State, and go home with my civic duty done.
That is about as much thinking as was involved in the General Election process. The article of primary interest was about paper this time. And the Mail. Some of the controversy of the last election was the proliferation of the mail-in paper ballot. As you may recall, we left The Farm to return to Arlington last year. There was an item on the list of things to accomplish to ensure we were compliant with State Electoral standards.
The system seemed to accommodate our needs a few weeks ago when we logged into the State balloting system. The Secretary of State had our full names, dates of previous elections, and blank spots where we could add the new/old address at Big Pink. We filled them all in, and were only moderately surprised when a ballot and a couple envelopes appeared in the mail last week.
This evolution marked a change from what we have done since we originally moved to Arlington some 47 years ago. The In-Person Absentee worked well for us, but the “mail-in controversy” was a social ritual in which we had not participated. We had a green piece of paper from the Registrar and did our civic duty by actually reading it. We filled things out in the blank spaces provided on the stark white sheet on which the act of voting would occur.
No postage required, which is a handy thing. We then followed directions fairly well, having found the sheet outlining the candidates. Here in Arlington we are a deep blue in our aggregate numbers. We did a quick review, slid the official ballot into two envelopes, and were ready to walk over to the Lobby to slide the completed ballot into the mail system.
The wrinkle in the process then would have included that brisk walk, which never happened. It occurred to us that there was something remarkable in this particular electoral exercise. The State of Virginia has agreed to send ballots automatically for each election to whatever address we happen to have on file with the Registrar.
So, that decision will go on so long as we are still able to mark up official papers and deposit them in the wall-mount mail box. We are not confident we know how long that will be. But there appeared to be an opportunity to participate in this election in the Old School way, possibly for the last time. We decided to wait until election day yesterday and go over to our polling station to actually cast a ballot in person.
This being possibly the last opportunity to vote the way we learned from Mr. Nixon and Mr. McGovern. And of course, there is the legacy of the fascinating Mr. Carter.
There are more wrinkles, of course. Locating the polling station to ensure there has been no change took only a few minutes. Arranging for a ride required another couple calls, but was relatively painless. There could have been complications in that portion of the action list. When we arrived at the Culpeper Gardens polling station, the signs welcomed us from 11:00AM to 07:30PM. We were timely enough on our arrival, with plenty of time to vote as many times as necessary before sundown.
Since Arlington is essentially a single-party jurisdiction, there was only one candidate we knew and actually fill in the little bubble next to the name with gray, blue or black ink. The rest of the names and offices on the ballot were unknown, although we were invited to mark their bubbles with colorful write-in candidates. There were mercifully short lines inside the polling station. One to check identification, one to demonstrate we were actually going to try to vote once. Doug was the polling volunteer at the “I could vote by mail but am not going to, so here is my sworn statement that I am only going to talk to Doug.”
Accordingly, this General Election marked the same historical criteria we were looking for. We voted against several candidates here in Arlington by leaving the bubbles empty next to their names. We struggled a bit while inserting a new and freshly marked ballot into a special pouch. Doug did not help. We thought that might be inappropriate, and with markings complete, departed the polling station to return to Big Pink and consider what we had done.
We are OK with mail-in ballots, which is good thing since traveling to the polling system to physically drop the ballot will not be necessary. It is that “walking to the lobby” thing to find the mail-box that is the only potential hinderance. We think. These are likely to be increasingly emotional Election Days going forward, you know? We are glad we voted in person, even if it is the last time. The Green Sheet informs us that “ballots cast” the way we did it are things called “Provisional Ballots.” We don’t know if those have had changed provisions, not having done it before. The black ink words on the green sheet says all the Provisional ballots will be allocated at a meeting at noon today.
So, although we are compliant to the process, we technically have not voted until the little band at the Registrar’s Office wave their hands or whatever they are going to do at Noon.
It is just how things work here. The unofficial tallies have been published from the end-of-day totals counted Tuesday. One party won everything for which they had a candidate. The other didn’t. And, since this is a General Election, we will have another adventure in Voting in exactly one year. We will see how that goes, won’t we?
Copyright 2023 Voter Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com