I voted before work this morning. I live in one of those lauded-slash-dreaded swing states. There was a time–2008? 2012?–I wanted Ohio nuked from orbit. It was the only way to be sure. Now I want myself nuked from orbit.
I registered to attend a Kamala Harris rally in Harrisburg last week, but didn’t go. It would have been an all-day thing, it ended after dark, I don’t know that part of Harrisburg, and I don’t like driving after dark since I became partially sighted.
If I’d checked my email yesterday, I was invited to the Harris rally at the Philadelphia Art Museum. I didn’t attend that, either. I’ve been to the Philly Art Museum–I drove my sister there in 2002 for a Marymount alumni event–and I didn’t much like driving there in the daytime. I really wouldn’t have enjoyed it at night.
I was voter #32. Someone, a few voters ahead of me, was voting for the first time. I congratulated him as he got his sticker. His mother was so proud of him.
A Harris canvasser came by on Saturday. She wanted to make sure I was voting. I assure her I was, that I had a plan. I didn’t vote absentee–and early voting in Pennsylvania is really absentee-in-person–because I wanted to limit the claims of a “red wave” in Pennsylvania on Election Day–absentees aren’t opened and counted until after Election Day–plus, there’s no telling what shenanigans the GOP would get up to to try to limit/challenge absentee voting in this state. She said she understood and went on her way.
“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
Or, as Dan Rather says, “Courage.”