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Personal essays


Post Cards - Essay from Newsletter 135

More thoughts on the vote

GOTV

Before the presidential election, I volunteered for text banks, donated money, and wrote letters to encourage people to vote.

I’ve recently worried that I haven’t done enough this cycle. I’ve donated some money to candidates and some money to funds designed to help voters get to the polls. I’m always up for encouraging people to vote - I think all people who are legally eligible should be encouraged to vote, allowed to vote, and should vote.

This time I agreed to also write partisan postcards. Helen dropped off 220 names and two big stacks of postcards with careful instructions that included sample scripts.

There’s not a lot of room on a postcard so you have to choose your words carefully.

Imagine for a moment that you were writing me a postcard encouraging me to vote for your candidates - what would you write?

I decided my first message was that I wanted the person receiving the postcard to vote - even if they weren’t voting the way I wanted. So my first line was an ask that they, “Please vote in this midterm.”

If they did nothing else but vote, that’s a win.

Why

The second part was harder - why do I want them to vote for Democrats?

“Elect Democrats to…”

There’s choice - but I don’t want that to be listed first as that may put some off who misunderstand the Democrat position.

There’s privacy - but that’s too hard to explain - I only have a dozen words left.

There’s the economy - but I don’t think I can change their minds. Polling says most people agree with the Democrats’ positions but still trust the GOP with the economy.

There’s democracy itself - but it turns out everyone seems to agree that democracy is on the ballot but each side understands that word to mean something different.

So I wrote, “Elect Democrats to protect Social Security, Medicare, choice, and the right to vote.”

I have no idea if that was a good of effective message.

About the 100th time I wrote it I had real doubts. On the other hand, if it gets more people to the polls, that’s a win.

Saturday I biked to a coffee shop and wrote another sixty cards. Sunday I woke up and wrote another thirty.

I was out of postcards but still had another thirty names.

Community

Mollie Katzen recently paused in her tweets in support of issues I care about to remind us that these tweets do nothing to convince those on the other side.

Although I agree for the most part, I also think it’s important for us to be reminded that we aren’t alone.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the other side saying that they are the party that supports democracy and family values. Overwhelmed may be the wrong word. Demoralized may be the right one.

We aren’t alone in thinking Social Security and Medicare are important, that privacy - and therefore choice - is important, that democracy and access to the vote is important.

Sunday I biked over to Van Aken with my completed post cards and my unfinished list and joined a group at the picnic tables who were busy writing post cards. Soon the guy next to me was busily putting stamps on the post cards I’d filled out and I had a fresh stack of blank ones in front of me.

I was much less efficient surrounded by others, but it was important to see this group of people who had decided that this was important enough for them to spend their Sunday afternoon trying to reach potential voters.

At three o’clock the gathering was winding up. I handed over twenty more postcards and passed on the remaining ten names to someone who was taking them home to finish.

I had one more task to complete. I had to vote.

Vote

It’s really difficult to predict how someone hears the words you say.

I had a prickly discussion with a friend yesterday and it was all my fault. I broached a topic that we essentially agreed on in a way that he felt forced to argue about.

It was a silly argument about how to present code when teaching a new concept. I know he agreed with me because I’ve ready his books and he does it in the same way I do. And yet, I showed him a sample I didn’t like in a book I’m reading and argued that it was pedagogically flawed. The next thing I knew, my friend was defending that style - all because I’d chosen the wrong approach.

The thing is, me, my friend, and the author of the work I was objecting to, all really care about creating content that helps other people. We’re all trying to teach a concept effectively.

On the other hand, some people write deliberately to make a topic more obscure or use language that is quite confusing.

That’s how I felt when I sat down to vote.

I am reasonably educated and fairly aware of politics, and yet I don’t understand Issues 1 and 2 on my ballot.

I had to put the ballot down to think about them and research them.

First, I don’t understand the wording. Second, I don’t understand the implications.

Years ago we had an issue like this that created an independent commission that would create the districts for the State of Ohio.

After the most recent census the State Supreme Court has struck down the districts that the GOP controlled legislature has put forward ignoring the work of the commission. They’ve struck it down so many times that the GOP ran out the clock and we are voting on districts that give an unfair advantage to the GOP.

My post card encouraged people to elect Democrats to protect our right to vote - but that can’t cover armed intimidation at polling places, unfair districts in violation of our State Constitution and court order, people being forced to jump over increasingly high barriers to vote, and people being asked to vote on issues designed to be too complicated to understand.

I think back to an evening when I was in the Netherlands in a car with two friends on their election night. There was a fear that the right would gain power and they didn’t. But the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot was nearly twice as high as it often is here.

If you get nothing else from my post card - please vote at your next election.

Please vote every election.


Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 135. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe


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