I have a confession to make: last Tuesday was election day in Texas, one of the more important states in the presidential primaries, and I didn’t vote.
I really had every intention of voting, but you know what they say about good intentions and where they pave the road to.
And really, you shouldn’t blame me — you should blame this crazy primary system!
In Texas, even though we have open elections, many precincts put the Democrats and Republicans at different locations. Because we only have one vehicle, I had to wait for Mr. Burt to get home from work to go to the polls. He needed to vote, too. So we drove down to the high school where the Republican primary was being held (actually, this was the first time we learned that the Republicans and Democrats vote separately in our precinct) so Mr. Burt could show his support for Dr. Ron Paul. (Who I bailed on because he just didn’t have a prayer and while support for views is all well and good, I like Barack Obama well enough to want to support him.) With the exception of the ballot machine refusing to read Mr. Tater’s (I told him this was a sign that he should vote Democrat) and him having to redo it, it was smooth sailing in the Republican primary. There weren’t many people there. (And I can only conclude since Hilary didn’t do very well in our neck of the woods, it was that they stayed home because John McCain was a foregone conclusion instead of voting for Hilary because they’d listened to Rush Limbaugh.) We were in and out of the Republican polls in less than fifteen minutes, and then drove a few minutes away to the Unitarian church where the Democratic election was being held, where we naively assumed it would be the same in and out deal for me to officialize my Obamania, then we could go home and have tacos for dinner.
As we drove around to the entrance to the parking lot, we noticed people were walking toward the church from a bank next-door and a country club across the street. Then it hit us: there were no free parking spaces at the church. We pulled a u-turn and drove back by the church to park at Wachovia, when we saw the line of voters — dozens of them — pouring out the door into the cold.
Mr. Burt looked at me pleadingly. “It’ll take at least an hour…”
There was much hemming and hawing I won’t bother you with, but in the end it wasn’t Mr. Burt’s puppy-dog eyes that got me, but my own growling stomach. And a firm desire not to be cold. Also, everyone seemed to be holding Obama posters, so, on the promise that Mr. Burt would give me $1000 if Obama lost by my one un-cast vote, I let him take me home so I could cook tacos. I’m pretty sure there’s something inherently wrong about that, but as it turned out Obama won by quite a huge margin in our precinct.
On a slight tangent, he’s taken the caucus, as well, and though I’m still not quite sure how, it looks like that means he’ll actually snag Texas back from Hilary. Hooray for the Totally Screwed Up Primary Process!
So yes, I don’t even care that I am probably the reason Tina Fey said, on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live: “Women have come so far as feminists that they don’t feel obligated to vote for a candidate just because she’s a woman. Women today feel perfectly free to vote for whoever Oprah tells them to.”
Funny stories aside, I do want to have a bit of a rant about the Totally Screwed Up Primary Process.
Even though this will be my third time to vote in a presidential election, it’s the first time I’ve ever A) not been too swamped with school to be able to pay attention and B) actually cared about the primaries. So it’s the first time I’ve been aware that we have a Totally Screwed Up Primary Process.
Or that you get sick to death of them before the first three months of the year are up.
Why do we do them like this? Why does every state have a different election day, a different procedure? Why do some states’ Republican parties do Winner Takes All? How is that remotely fair? Why do the Democrats have a popular vote and a caucus? And why does a caucus utterly grasp the comprehension of a college-educated, politically invested woman such as myself? How can we have this ridiculous mess that is the Michigan and Florida primary?
(Of course we are not surprised that Florida has screwed up yet another election process.)
These aren’t primary elections. They’re primary strategies. Hilary Clinton would be farther behind Barack Obama if Republicans hadn’t listened to talk radio hosts and had actually voted for a candidate they support instead of the candidate they think has a better chance of losing to John McCain. How does that sort of voting gaugue where Americans really stand on the issues? Again, how is it fair?
The whole point of voting is that everyone has a chance because everyone has a right to make a personal show of support for the candidate they think is the right man for the job. This isn’t an NCAA tournament betting pool, even if it does feel a heck of a lot like March Madness. I do realize that with polls, there’s always a certain degree of strategy involved in voting, but polls don’t always prove accurate predictions of an election’s outcome, especially when there are more than two or three candidates left in each party. Even with poll data, people are still more inclined to vote for who they want rather than who will win (or who won’t win, as the case may be).
These days I’d call myself a Libertarian. I want the Federal govenernment to be as hands-off our lives as it can be. And yet I think we need Federal standards for the presidential primary process. First of all, every state ought to vote on the same day. Second, that same day ought to be closer to the general election. Third, every state needs to vote on the same way. We can go our own way on the state and local levels, but for national ones, it makes more sense to me for everyone to vote the same way. May the man (or woman) with the most votes win. End of primaries. On with the presidential debates!
In other words, voters, leave the strategy up to the candidates and their campaign managers, and stop allowing yourselves to become media tools.
No Comments on "How I Sacrificed My Suffrage and Missed the Texas Primary to Cook Dinner for My Dear Hubby"
You must be logged in to post a comment.