Tag: voting

Posted on

What’s Called For

When you have to write a column a couple of days in advance, there’s always a danger of being overtaken by events.

This one didn’t even make it to 400 words.

“THEY CALLED PENNSYLVANIA!!” Heather shouted from the bedroom as I wrote on Saturday morning.

My brain abruptly turned into a train derailment as my fingers skidded to a stop.

“You’re kidding!” I called back.

“No! NBC, CNN, now ABC …”

I looked at my incomplete draft. And then reached for the backspace key.

Maybe I ought to buy that lottery ticket after all.

Like most of us, I had gotten used to the thought that “Call Me” might be a nice Blondie song, but it was unlikely to be seen in real life for quite some time. After all, this is how it works, right? Trickle of votes, adjust the lead, back to the count. Trickle of votes, adjust the lead, back to the count. Over and over in an endless news cycle, sort of like Peter Jennings meets Bill Murray.

To be honest, the catch-and-release pattern gave me a rueful chuckle. This used to be my former life as a newspaper reporter. In the Super Bowl-like enthusiasm of Election Day – marked by newsrooms with high adrenaline and higher pizza bills – there would always be at least one race that would defy deadlines. In a ballot full of easy calls and quick turnarounds, you would somehow draw the one that looked you in the eye and screamed “Meaningful results? TONIGHT? HAHAHAHAHA! See you in the morning, sucker!”

So yes, this is familiar. It’s just on a larger scale.

It’s also more challenging.

As a reporter, I had a job to do, a story to write at the end of it all. As a voter, it’s less obvious. After all, we’ve done our job, right? We made our call, said our say, and now we can finally be thrilled, or disappointed, or eager to see if armies of lawyers can manage to beat each other to death with briefcases.

But it’s not that simple.

When the election ends, our job is just getting started.

There’s been a lot written lately about peaceful transitions of power. That’s not just a courtesy – it’s a recognition that elective offices are under a permanent job review. Fortunes can change as easily as the tides, yesterday’s “outs” can be tomorrow’s “ins,” and when it’s your turn, you had better show the same grace on the way out that you hope to receive on the way back in.

And that job review? That’s us. Regardless of party. Regardless of faction.

And that goes on long beyond a cast-and-counted ballot.

It means watching the people we choose, and not just as a fan club. It means separating truth from fiction, learning what’s going on, learning what it means for people beyond our own sliver of the world. Not silencing our voice, but learning to hear the voices of others as well. As any choir will tell you, that’s the only way to create harmony.

It means holding people accountable for their actions, even the ones on our “team.” I use the quotes, because our real team is ultimately the country itself. No one deserves our blind support. Praise what makes us better, challenge what makes us worse, and always look for a way to bring more light and less pain to the world.

I’ve said it before – this country is never finished. We need to make sure the next chapter is one we can all be proud of. Even if we have to rewrite it in midstream.

Now and always, that is our calling.

Posted on

Change Of Course

At long last, Heather’s sleeping.

That sounds simple. It’s been anything but.

For a few weeks now, Heather’s bedtime routine has looked like a kung fu movie. Every few seconds, she kicks with a force that could shatter pine. Every few moments, her arms lash out with a speed that Bruce Lee would envy. Over and over, on and on for hours, long enough to clear even the largest army of unseen ninja.

All we’re missing is the bad voice dubbing.

As you’ve guessed, there’s no Hollywood contract involved. Heather’s multiple sclerosis sometimes unwraps surprise gifts for us, and this has been one of the most unwelcome to unwrap. Call it myoclonus. Call it restless leg syndrome amped up to warp factor 5. Call it whatever you want, but please call it from long distance – you don’t want it visiting the house.

Not unless you like getting about five hours of sleep a week, that is.

Nights can be endless when you’re trying to find something that helps for even a few minutes – distraction, massage, anything – and hope becomes hard to find. You start to wonder what the doctor can do, what tools still might be in the box, especially for the woman who’s allergic to almost everything.

And then. One day after the worst night of all. One change in medicine, so small we weren’t sure it could possibly work.

Quiet.

Peace.

We’d both forgotten what that felt like.

Heather’s not completely motionless at night. But the big battle is over. What’s left is on mute – uncomfortable, sometimes even still painful, but not hopeless. She can sleep and rest and rebuild.

Just one change can make all the difference in the world.

That’s true for a family. For a state. For a nation.

Maybe it’s the small suggestion at the end of a hard day that makes everything brighter for a minute. (“Hey, Missy, how about we grab some ice cream?”)

Maybe it’s the promise of snow after weeks of fire, bringing the cold and the wet to where it’s most needed.

Maybe it’s the election year reminder, after too many commercials and too much junk mail, that we have the power to change things. To decide who we should keep and who should go, to vote against what weakens us and for what makes us stronger.

Whatever it is, it’s a reminder.

What was, doesn’t have to be.

I don’t want to just stop at Lincoln’s favorite lesson, “This too shall pass.” For me, that’s a little too …well, passive. In my mind, it’s clearer to say “This too shall change.”

Some changes we simply have to endure and make the best of. But some we can touch. Some even start with us. They may not be big changes, but small ones can propagate, whether it’s the crack that brings down a foundation or the seed that someday shades the entire yard.

That’s a cause for hope. That even our worst situations are unstable at their roots. That with work and effort and determination, something new can emerge. Probably not perfect. Almost certainly with problems of its own. But nonetheless, something we can build from.

The cast of Les Miserables once sung in hope that “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” They weren’t wrong. The light’s still there. Waiting.

That sounds simple. We know it’s anything but.

But difficult isn’t impossible.

And when the big battle is over – any of the big battles –  maybe we can even take a moment to rest.

Anyone up for a kung fu movie?

Posted on

A “Feud”-ile Struggle?

The smoke has been so thick it’s felt like fog.

The wind has been barreling through like an invading army.

The national news has felt stranger every day, and the news from friends and family has had its own strains to bear.

The way this year is going … I swear I can hear the voice of Steve Harvey.

I promise, I haven’t lost my mind after too much homebound exposure to the Game Show Network. And yes, I know the reigning joke on the internet is that 2020 has been a real-life “Jumanji,” with each month revealing a new and more dangerous level to the living game.

But if this year hasn’t been “Family Feud” in action, then what is it?

I’m sure you remember the setup. You have families scrambling against each other for what often turns out to be an incredibly small reward. You have heat-of-the-moment guesses that often produce groans or contagious laughter. And most of all, you have The Board.

STEVE HARVEY: “100 people surveyed, top five answers on the board. Name the next disaster that’s coming down the pike in 2020.”

CONTESTANT: (Buzzer slam) “Invasion by killer clowns!”

STEVE HARVEY: “Send in the clowns!”

SURVEY BOARD: “Bing!!!” (Reveals no. 1 answer)

What’s made Family Feud stand out over the years is that it’s a game of anticipating trends. Being a master of trivia doesn’t help. You don’t have to be a good speller, or willing to take on a bizarre dare, or even be blindly lucky. All you have to do is predict what’s likely to be up there, even if it’s completely at odds with what you’d expect.

If you’re good at putting yourself into someone else’s shoes, it can be easy to score big. If you’re not, it can seem almost bizarrely random. And either way, the only way to survive is to try to guess what’s coming next.

Yeah, this is sounding more familiar by the minute.

We anticipate what our neighbors might need and try to help. We think about what our neighbors might do and plan accordingly. (“A restaurant on a holiday weekend? Maaaybe not.”) And as the answers get revealed one by one, we’re often guessing as best as we can to try to keep up, wondering “how many people expected this?”

Maybe that’s why it sometime feels a little hopeless – like we’re reacting to events instead of making choices.

And that’s why I’m encouraged by at least one turn of events in “2020: The Home Edition.”

Namely, the massive voter turnout we’ve started to see, this early in.

As of Friday, Colorado’s early voter turnout was 24 times what it had been in 2016. Twenty-four times! And we haven’t been unique – across the country, folks have been lining up to cast a ballot and make a choice.

That’s not the act of a hopeless population.

People can turn out to vote when they’re inspired. Or when they’re angry. Or when they see a job that needs to be done or a change that needs to be made. There are a hundred different motives you can ascribe to a large turnout, but not one of them is “despair.”

Because voting, by its nature, is a fundamentally hopeful act.

To vote is to say “I can change what’s on the board.”

For once, a piece of 2020 is in our own hands.

I know. It’s a small piece. But small pieces accumulate. And if enough of us have the confidence to make our voices heard – to be a part of the outcome instead of just waiting for it to happen – we can put our own answer up to the times we’re facing.

Together, we can make the game our own. For all of us.

Survey says?

Posted on

Fighting for Indecision

On Friday came the news that I had been waiting for. Probably many of you, as well.

“Your Boulder County ballot has been mailed,” the email read. “Look for it in your mailbox soon!”

Finally. The last lap was in sight.

In recent years, most of us have had enough election fatigue to fill a book, and that volume is called “The Neverending Story.” No sooner does one campaign drag itself to an end than the next one sprints out of the starting blocks, demanding our attention. (And money. Never forget money.)

It’s not that we don’t care. If anything, the opposite has been true lately. People have gotten more passionate about their politics than ever – some from seeing just how much difference these choices can make to themselves and their loved ones, others from the sort of team loyalty that the Broncos used to excite when their roster was longer than their disabled list. We’re paying attention. We’re caring. We’re engaged.

We’re also very, very tired.

Some of it is doing all of this in the middle of Pandemic Land, of course. Captain America himself would be more than a little drained in his patriotic duties after dealing with the everyday realities of COVID-19 and its ripple effects. But there’s more to the picture than that.

And the biggest part of that picture is called certainty.

Colorado has had mail ballots for several years now. In most of those years, I have waited until the last possible day to fill out and hand-deliver my vote. Why? A desire for complete information – or, as I’ve always liked to put it, “I want to give the candidates the maximum opportunity to screw up before I make up my mind.”

There were always positions to be weighed, nuances to be studied, details to be considered. Even in the pre-mail ballot era, I could sometimes take a while – at my first-ever presidential election, in 1992, I wasn’t completely sure who my choice would be until three days before Election Day.

That’s not a problem this year.

I suspect that’s not a problem for a lot of us.

This year, my ballot’s likely to be returned within a day or so of getting it. And I know I’m not the only one. A recent poll from Quinnipiac University found just 5 percent of voters were undecided – a five-point drop from the same moment in 2016. The lines are sharply drawn, the issues clearly demarked and for most of us, the choices were made long ago.

Which, of course, is one reason why the voices have been louder than ever. Why the stakes have felt so high. And why there’s been such a desire to just get on with it – and at the same time, an anxiety about what that might mean.

At its best, politics is the principle that “talking is better than fighting,” to quote an old professor of mine. It’s meant to be a way for people who don’t always agree to find common ground, or at least to work out how to move forward together.

But lately, it’s felt like just one step above war. And a short step at that.

I want my indecision back.

I want to be able to look at two candidates and say “Hm, I like what he said there but she’s got a point.”

I want to be able to consider a win or loss without dread. Trepidation, sure. That’s part of the game. But without a fear that either of the players is going to overturn the board.

I think we can get back to a place like that. Not quickly. Not easily. Not without work. But if enough of us want it, if enough of us choose it – both on the ballot and in how we live our everyday lives – we can get there.

We’re tired. We’re worried. But we can still make a difference.

Watch that mailbox.

Our next step comes now.

Posted on

A Simple Act

Breathe deep. You’ve almost made it again.

After Tuesday, the ads are over. The junk mail can stop. The robocalls and surveys can find another topic for a while (and surely will). And with Daylight Savings over, you’ve even got your lost sleep back so you can recover your bearings.

But first, there’s a small job to left to do.

And small as it is, a lot of us won’t do it.

Every couple of years, a lot of time and money gets spent on “Get Out the Vote” campaigns. And every couple of years, the effect is … variable, if you want to say it kindly. In a good year, 60 percent of us may show up to the polls. In a bad year, even 40 percent may look like an impossible dream.

And in a midterm election, when there’s no presidential candidate at the top of the ticket, the bad years can be very bad indeed.

Everyone with a cause or a candidate wants to change that, of course – at least, for the folks who support THEM or who haven’t decided yet. And so, a lot of tactics get tried:

 

Eat Your Spinach – “Voting is good for you! It’s your duty! And you’re not leaving this dinner table until you’re done!”

Ooh, Shiny! – “Who wouldn’t want this cool sticker of the American flag? It’s the perfect accent to every outfit!”

What About Those Guys? – “If you don’t, (fill in least favorite person) will – and you know what he’s like!”

Buy Now! – “It couldn’t be easier! We’ll bring the ballot right to you! You drop it in the mail! Or even bring it to the curb! Heck, we’ll even throw in this lovely set of steak knives ABSOLUTELY FREE!” (Disclaimer: there are no steak knives.)

Be Emotional  – “People died to give you this vote. And you want to throw it away? I bet you shot Bambi’s mom, too.”

Be Practical – “These are the elections that count. No electoral college hoo-hah getting in the way, just your voice and mine. You wanna complain? Here’s your ticket.”

Be Really Practical – “You know those phone calls and doorbell ringers you’re sick of? You vote, and they magically go away. It’s like something out of Harry Potter.”

 

As I said, the results are mixed. Some tactics may help (especially clearing away the logistical barriers), but none is a magic bullet cure-all. And the reason is simple.

At its heart, voting is an act of caring.

It’s a small act of caring, true. Voting is to civic engagement what a wedding is to a good marriage – a first step on the road that’s often mistaken for the end of the race. It’s a commitment that says what kind of society you want to live in.  What issues and people are important to you. Who gets helped and who gets hurt.

It’s not just an abstract number shuffle. It’s a decision that changes more lives than the lottery and for a longer period. Sometimes the results can seem prosaic – jobs created or lost, standards created or repealed, projects begun or abandoned. But at the root are faces –a decision of who will be seen as a neighbor and who as a stranger, who will be greeted with open arms and who with doubled fists.

A single step. A first step. Even an easy one.

And if the caring isn’t there, even the easy step is too hard. It gets forgotten. Or cynically bypassed. Or maybe worst of all, done without any thought at all, just a tick of the box to get it over with. Boosting the turnout numbers, yes, but adding nothing to the decision.

Would you want an employee or a co-worker who approaches their job that way?

It can be good that everyone votes. But it’s vital that everyone who votes, cares.

Take the time. Spend the thought. Invest the heart.

Once again, there’s a small job left to do.

Do it right. Do it well.

 

Posted on

The Next Duty

When I lived in Emporia, Kansas, the week of Veterans Day was always one of the highlights of the year. During the week-long celebrations, all of us would be reminded that we owed our veterans three basic things:

1) To care for the veterans we already have.

2) To create as few additional veterans of war and conflict as possible.

3) To take the nation they protected and continue to make it something special.

The first point continues to fuel many a speech and editorial, often with a nod to the needs of the aging VA hospital system. The second remains a common desire for those in and out of uniform, especially after this country spent so many years fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But with Election Day now falling into the rear-view mirror, maybe the final item is worth looking at once more. What kind of America are we building?

I know, we’re all sick to death of campaign speeches. And campaign mailers. And television ads. And telephone surveys that ask for “just a few moments of our time.” (As my old math teachers might have said, “a few” times several calls per day equals “a LOT.”) This isn’t meant to join that particular chorus, and I think all of you might run me out of town if I tried, after dipping me in tar, feathers, and a burning copy of the film from the last Oakland Raiders game.

But the fact is, there’s still a job ahead of us.

True, the most basic job is done. And many of us tend to think of voting as the greatest duty we owe our country, to fill in the bubbles, drop off our ballots, and then either cheer or curse at the results before getting on with our lives.

But it doesn’t stop there. It never did. It’s a necessary first step, but there’s a lot of staircase left to climb.

Yes, we’ve chosen our leaders. Yes, they can make choices that help or hurt a lot of us. But most of what this nation can be is on us.

Do we lift up the weak or chase them from our doorstep?

Do we greet our neighbors with love and acceptance or with jeers and mockery? Do we even know our neighbors when we see them?

Do we carefully watch the steps of those we’ve elected and call them to task when they need reminding? Or do we just hand them the keys and go back to sleep?

Do we look for ways to build, to welcome, to aid, to defend? Or are we more interested in tearing down, in separating, in spurning the unworthy and attacking the strange?

Our answers will do more to define America than any war or legislation ever could.

The Christian songwriter Don Francisco once wrote that God didn’t care about the height of church steeples or the loudness of hymns, but whether the people inside cared for their family, their neighbors, and the rest of the world:

Are you living as a servant to your sisters and your brothers?

Do you make the poor man beg you for a bone?

Do the widow and the orphan cry alone?

I have heard from many people who are afraid of what might happen next, who find their future uncertain. So much of that is in our hands. What we say. What we do. What we’ll tolerate and what we’ll rise up to oppose.

What answer will we give?

The words of the African-American poet Langston Hughes, written more than 80 years ago, still echo:

O, yes,

I say it plain,

American never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath —

America will be!

Today and always, we must build the America our veterans swore to defend.

What America will it be?

Posted on

Vote of Confidence

In Colorado, my sister would be a scofflaw.

You’d never guess. I mean, she’s a respectable type, if you leave out the bit about being a Microsoft attorney. She’s got two great kids, she’s a community volunteer, she considers the Colorado Avalanche to be a gift from above, or at least from Quebec.

But if she still lived in Colorado, she’d be at risk of a misdemeanor. Whether her action was a deliberate choice or an innocent impulse, the authorities might decide you can’t be too careful.

After all, those “ballot selfies” are pernicious.

If you haven’t run into them on social media yet, ballot selfies are the latest Election Day trend to come down the pike. With more states going to mail ballots, the cute little “I Voted” sticker is becoming a less common accessory. Instead, folks have begun taking pictures of their completed ballots and posting them online to prove that they’ve done their civic duty. (Despite the name, the ballots themselves have yet to start snapping pictures unless genetic engineering has gotten really spectacular.)

All of this was well and good until the Denver District Attorney’s office and the Colorado Secretary of State began warning voters that Colorado law doesn’t allow you to show your ballot to anyone. Online or otherwise.

As you might guess, the  state is now being sued.

At first, all this seemed a bit amusing to me. I grew up with the idea that my vote is my business and nobody else’s. A bumper sticker or campaign pin might make your sympathies obvious, you might discuss your support or opposition to a particular issue, but putting your ballot out there for all to see seemed a little like sharing your pay stub with the world – unnecessary and maybe even a bit risky.

But the more I thought about it, the odder it seemed. These days, many people wear their politics on their sleeve, as obvious as a Bronco fan dressed head-to-toe in bright orange. Certainly, no one should be compelled to reveal their ballot or have it displayed against their will, but if someone wants to share how they voted, why not?

The official explanation in the states that ban it is to prevent bribery: “I’ll pay you to vote for Councilman Whiplash; you show me proof before cashing in.” But in both Colorado and my sister’s Washington, ballots are mailed to your home, making the restriction almost impossible to enforce, unless there’s a Facebook photo for evidence. (Heck, a husband and wife that fill out their ballots together are technically lawbreakers.)

More to the point, examples of this sort of corruption are vanishingly difficult to find. Now I’ll grant you, this has been a year for seemingly impossible things – Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize, the Chicago Cubs going to the World Series, Alexander Hamilton having his spot on the $10 bill saved by a hit Broadway show – but  when you have to stretch and strain to find any cases to justify a restriction that’s been on the books for over a century, the odds of this one seem pretty small. Even if an instance is out there somewhere, if you want to identify and catch the person who’s offering the cash, you’re still going to need more proof than a single picture.

So why not allow it?

Honestly, I’m not sure anymore. It may or may not be wise to share all your political choices with every passerby – but if your ballot is your business, isn’t sharing it your business, too?

Every so often, there are efforts to amend this law. This year, they’ve gained a bit more energy. Perhaps it’s time they succeeded.

I know the state’s reluctant. But at long last, it may be time to bite the ballot.

Posted on

Exhaustive Democracy

I don’t usually write about my reporting side here. I’m going to make a small exception today.

If I can stay awake, that is.

As many of you know, I cover city politics. And this last Tuesday, city politics covered me like a semi covers a skunk. It was almost 1 in the morning before the final gavel came down, closing a night of often impassioned and sometimes angry debate.

The subject was fracking, of course. It so often seems to be these days. And I won’t be weighing in directly on the issue, just like I haven’t weighed in on airport runways, backyard chickens, or marijuana dispensaries. My job is still to cover the story, not to be the story.

But I do have something to say to the five dozen speakers who pummeled the air with their opinions and concerns. To all involved in extending the debate until deadlines were only a fond memory. To everyone who helped me wake up the next morning feeling like I’d gone 30 rounds with Joe Louis in his prime.

Thank you.

Seriously.

Memorial Day is almost upon us. Every year, we talk about honoring the soldiers who fought for the nation we live in and the rights we hold. The men and women who help keep this a free country.

But the finest military in the world can’t keep a nation free if it loses the habit.

I know. This is the sort of thing newspapers usually get excited about just after Election Day, either praising the public for a higher-than-expected turnout or excoriating it for a low attendance rate. But voting’s only one step in the democratic process. The easiest one, at that.

The hard part is to enter the brawl. To shape the issues that get voted on. To push the officials who cast the votes, maybe even to become them.

To be a voice instead of just a hole-puncher.

I didn’t agree with every speaker Tuesday night. To be honest, there were a few on all sides that had me biting my tongue hard enough to leave marks. Some went so far out on a limb that they were tap dancing with woodpeckers.

But I give them this, good and bad and ugly. None of them stayed home and stewed. None of them decided it was somebody else’s problem. All of them came and made their feelings known.

Sure, we can talk about civility or checking the facts or finding ways to come together. Those things are important, too, even crucial. But the first step, the vital step, is to break through apathy and get everyone in the same room and talking. You can’t have a good public debate if you have no public debaters.

And whatever the other faults of Tuesday may have been, that was not one of them.

So thank you, one more time. Thank you for insisting on being heard. Thank you for being a people, a public, a participant.

See you all next time.

Right after I get myself a nap.