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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nYesterday morning I filled out my ballot. For president, there was only one real choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For state representative, Mike Jones is running unopposed. I’m not a fan of Jones, so I wrote in my go-to write-in candidate, my former Diamond colleague, Todd Kaylor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though Todd is very much in the “if elected, I will not serve” mold, he has a bold platform on lowered tariffs on Funko POP! vinyl figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After making my choices, I sealed my ballot in the white security envelope, sealed it again in the outer envelope, signed it, and dated it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I left for the march downtown I picked up my mail, and I received a postcard imploring me to vote for Eugene DePasquale in the Congressional race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’d already voted for DePasquale. Frankly, there was never any chance that I’d have voted for his opponent, Scott Perry. Perry is, to be frank, little more than a FOX News troll, a right-wing nationalist who’s in government to destroy it, who thinks anyone who disagrees with him is a socialist. I missed the ballot march.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The details on Facebook were sketchy, a vague “12 to 2.” I parked in the Philadelphia Street garage, across from the York Central Market, and visiting the market for the first time in a few years. I bought some pretzel dogs from a stand for lunch and a bottle of apple wine from the Burnt Timbers Winery<\/a> stand. It was very lively in downtown York; there was a street festival with a band, and I saw a woman walking miniature pony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After putting the bottle of wine in my car, I walked over to Penn Park. I was hoping to see a crowd of people. Instead, I saw a single man, wearing a worn green jacket that looked like Army surplus, sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After taking some photos of the Civil War memorial and making a survey of the park to ascertain that there was no massed group of local Democrats, I began to walk back toward downtown and the secure ballot box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, along George Street, I found the ceremony and speeches that followed the ballot march in a parking lot by City Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The speakers — including a minister and a speaker from the local NAACP chapter — talked about the importance of voting, the work and inspiration of the the late John Lewis, the importance for making “good trouble,” and getting involved. After this, I walked my ballot the rest of the way to the secure drop box on Market Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The secure drop is secure in the sense that it’s guarded. Otherwise, it’s basically a closed recycle bin with drop slot at the top. An election worker asked me a few questions before I dropped it in — was it sealed in the security envelope? was the outer envelope signed and dated? was I the voter handling the ballot? — and after it was dropped I felt as though my civic duty had been discharged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later that afternoon, I received an email from the board of elections that they had received and logged my ballot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I then checked out the old cemetery at the Episcopalian Church downtown<\/a>. I’d looked at it briefly about seven years ago, though I hadn’t taken any photos or taken a closer look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s a very small cemetery — and very old. The church is pre-Revolutionary War, and, as I understand it, there are Hessian soldiers buried there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though it was overcast and always looked as though rain threatened, it was warm enough that I left my hoodie in the Beetle atop the parking garage. It was a nice day for an outing, on perhaps one of the last warm days of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A week ago I received my mail ballot from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I hadn’t been expecting it, but I voted by mail in the primary due to the COVID risk, and when I applied for the ballot then I must have signed up to receive mail-in ballots automatically. The ballot had sat on myContinue reading “Doing the Thing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[4485,4936,619,4468,4],"class_list":["post-32867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-2020-election","tag-eugene-depasquale","tag-joe-biden","tag-scott-perry","tag-york","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/20201024_084941-1200x900.jpg\")
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KB of the St. Louis area, thank you for writing me. I did what I could to get Scott Perry out of office and to put Eugene DePasquale into Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/20201024_132017-640x480.jpg\")
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