I’m a voter. I enjoy reading about candidates and issues, turning over new and recycled ideas, trying to decide which ones speak to me. I like engaging in conversations with others, but then Election Day arrives, and now I have to put my money where my mouth is.
I learned about voting from my father. In his final year of life when he was ill, he lamented that it was the first election he was missing in all of his 87 years in Hilo. I offered to get him an absentee ballot, but he declined, saying he hadn’t been able to keep up with what was going on.
By example, Dad taught me to evaluate issues and candidates then follow through with a decision. But where he was quiet and mild-mannered, I am more niele. Watchutink, watchutink? Listening to alternate views, I always wonder who these voters are and how they got there. Clearly our paths are not the same, but wouldn’t it be boring if we all walked lockstep through life?
That last sentence is the teacher in me talking. Actually it would be fine if we not only all thought the same, but if, in fact, we all thought like me. I used to tell my kids, “Just listen to your mother, and you won’t go wrong!”
But then those appendages cut themselves loose and are zooming everywhere, landing in places I’ve never been. I listen in amazement to their vocal and sometimes passionate position on politics in general and candidates in particular. If I like it, then they got it from me. If not, then it must have come from social media, cable TV, their father … .
Now that Super Tuesday has just ended, elections are on my mind, especially since we’ve been receiving information about mail-in ballots for Hawaii voters starting this year. Mail-in voting began in 2005 in Seattle while I was still living there, and I confess to mixed feelings about the replacement of voting machines, despite those meddling Russians.
Before 2005, I looked forward to Election Day (Thanks, Dad). There was excitement in the air as we prepared to vote at designated gyms, churches, schools and community centers, all bustling and bristling with electricity.
There’s something purposeful about arriving at your packed polling place, signing in, getting the blank ballot, finding an empty booth, closing the curtain behind you, marking the boxes and, finally, exiting and turning your vote over. There. Done! Now I can grumble all I want.
Afterwards, on my way to work, I’d pass dedicated supporters bundled up on a frigid November day, waving signs at busy Seattle street corners, and I always toot-tooted my horn in friendly appreciation.
After mail-in voting arrived in Washington, I noticed that the excitement and energy of voting was missing, or was it just me? Even though every county opens an in-person voting center during elections,
Seattle has almost half a million registered voters, so let’s say we were encouraged to mail it in.
Sitting at the kitchen table in my pajamas and marking a ballot is not the same as marching into the polling place to exercise my franchise. And, yes, I can still go to a voter service center here, but as of this writing, there are only two on the island, and my guess is that these places will be as somber as a funeral home, serving mostly fossils like me.
In 2016, Hawaii won the national distinction of having the lowest number of registered voters who cast their ballots. Apparently, not everyone is as dedicated as my father.
Perhaps it’s difficult to convince ourselves, isolated and insulated out here in the middle of the Pacific, that our small voice matters. Or maybe the sad history of these islands makes us cynical, so what’s the point?
Will mail-in ballots light a fire under Hawaii voters? Maybe. As for me, I’ll still do it, but like so much else these days, voting — which used to be a communal activity — has become a solitary one.
I miss the good old days when even though voting was by secret ballot, getting it out was a group effort.
Rochelle delaCruz was born in Hilo, graduated from Hilo High School, then left to go to college. After teaching for 30 years in Seattle, Wash., she retired and returned home to Hawaii. She welcomes your comments at rainysideview@gmail.com. Her column appears twice a month on Mondays.