For the first time in I don’t know how long, I didn’t early vote this year.
I went once but arrived just a little late.
So, Thursday I was a bit worried about whether I knew where I should vote.
I used to vote at Bellwood School but was moved to the Courthouse. But, I was pretty sure I had been moved back to Bellwood.
Happily, I was right and became the proud 14th voter to cast a ballot at that polling place Thursday shortly before 9 a.m. (figuring to avoid the crowd, that obviously never developed, before and around 8 a.m.).
By voting in the Rutherford County general election and state and federal primary, I joined an elite group of less than 9 percent of the registered voting population.
Pretty pathetic.
Of course, as I have noted in earlier columns, we just aren’t going to have decent voter turnout when we keep asking people to go to the polls time after time in a disjointed, confusing voting cycle as this one that pops up every four years.
Now saying that is easy. Figuring out how to adjust municipal, county, state and federal voting requirements to make for a logical voting process is much more complicated and difficult.
The municipal issues could be solved pretty easily. The county and state election laws are much more difficult to adjust and would have to fit the federal, read that as presidential, election dates that don’t necessarily make sense closer to home.
But, ultimately it’s just our duty, one that we most obviously just ignore, but there it is. I figure it took me a maximum of 15 minutes to vote including travel time, but not counting the political yakking outside the 150-foot no-politicking zone.
I’ve said it before and will say it again: If you are truly patriotic, you will do more than put your hand over your heart when the National Anthem plays. You will make an effort to make democracy work – and that’s by voting.
If I was a candidate who got out there these past several months and worked my backside off, I’d be pretty darn disappointed in American democracy.
•••
Thursday turned out to be pretty eventful after all.
Bill Boner’s win for tax assessor was startling because incumbents almost never get beat. The last one to lose was about 10 years ago with greatly extenuating circumstances.
As expected the races for party nominees for the open 48th state House seat were quite competitive.
Joe Carr, who made a strong showing against the now retiring John Hood two years ago, held off a strong challenge from Lou Ann Zelenik for the Republican nomination, while Tim Tipps, long active in Democratic politics, won his party’s nod over Nashville fireman Rick Parks, who has huge labor backing.
Living in the 48th District, I was visited (although not always at home) by all four candidates and received calls, or recorded calls, from most of their campaigns.
That’s a pretty good indicator of strong interest in the position.
Of course the biggest surprise Thursday was that the historic City Café poll was wrong twice – on Boner and Carr.
I think that was only the second time the poll missed on a countywide race in two decades, and that was the unusual result some 10 years ago.
•••
OK, so folks will get excited about the next, and thankfully final, election this year.
The Super Bowl of elections comes Nov. 4 with the presidential election.
With no incumbent this is always the biggest election of all, as, I guess, it should be.
While I can argue that local elections make more impact on our lives, that doesn’t have to be the case.
For good or bad, you can decide for yourself, George W. Bush has had tremendous impact on our lives during his two terms.
Being a cynical old news guy, I long ago gave up on expecting much from presidential candidates. My favorites never seem to get nominated, and my positive expectations are almost never realized.
If you don’t expect much, anything of a positive nature from a successful presidential candidate seems pretty good.
But, that’s only happened … hmmm … let me get back to you.
•••
Now I will vote many times for whoever is responsible for this weekend’s weather.
Balmy in August? Unfathomable.
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