Calm

In 2004, The Stranger (Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper) ran this cover after the election. That week was rough for many of us. I remember crying in Prof Poet's office the day after the election. I felt betrayed by my fellow citizens and lost. How could the people in my country believe that our country was going in the right direction? How could they believe that voting for a guy because you could have a beer with him instead of because he is wicked smart is a good idea? Why was the decision for president of the USA resembling the decision for president of the senior class in high school (who's cuter, more popular, not too smart?)?

Today, I am calm. I don't think that our problems are solved because of these election results, in fact, I think we have a long way ahead of us. We (as a nation) need to focus on rebuilding our reputation internationally and collaborate on international problems like the global economy and global warming while simultaneously figuring out how to prioritize and deal with our national problems (health care, the deficit and debt, social security, housing market...) and our local problems too. Obama has a pretty terrible job. But, his speech last night was inspirational and moving.

It's hard to look at the red state-blue state maps and not be worried about the huge gulf in our country. Maps like this one show a stark divide.

2008 red/blue by state

However, maps like this

2008 map by county and population

are much more encouraging (and a little distorted!). The map maker uses population data to resize the states in proportion to their population and uses a scale of red-purple-blue to color county by county, thus the overwhelming amout of red is reduced. Instead of the red state blue state divide, we have lots of purple and some blue and a tiny bit of red. More maps (using electoral college votes, comparisons to 2004 etc) are available from his website.

Voting

I voted in a polling place for the first time in my life on Thursday. The folks who aren't from our Rose State may not realize that Oregon adopted an entirely absentee ballot system a while back. When I first started voting, I registered in my home town and had mom mail me my ballot each year. Then, the state shifted over to the mail in ballot system. I didn't fully appreciate how great mail in voting is until this week.

Square State allows early voting in polling places during a few weeks before election day (they also have an absentee ballot system, but I didn't do that early enough to get it in the mail). They're predicting a huge turnout for election day, so I figured I vote now rather than wait (check out the byline on this story). On Tuesday, I wandered over to the student union to mail a few letters and cast my ballot. The line was so long (more than 30 people and it didn't move the entire time I waited for my stamps) that I got discouraged and decided to wait until later in the week. It's pretty cool that they're having the early voting scattered across campus, so I figured I'd find another time to vote. Today the voting was at the school library. So after I finished teaching, I packed up my stuff and stopped by the library on my way home. I found this line.

I waited to vote for over an hour. The line had DOUBLED by the time I got to the front. I let a few girls go ahead of me as they were trying to vote before running to class (see what a nice teacher I am?!). Anyone who claims that university students don't care this time around are sorely mistaken. I was surrounded by kids who had never voted in an election before. I had a few freshman around me talking about how they were in 9th or 10th grade when Bush got elected the second time. On the one hand, I was so excited to see the turn out. On the other, I'm truly afraid that the local election staff have completely underestimated potential turnout and are unprepared for the crush that will happen. If you remember our posts about voting in the primaries... we completely exceeded anyone's expectations for turnout. These kids were waiting in a line for more than an hour to vote.That's right, 19 year olds were waiting to vote.

Which brings me really to my point when I started this post: voting in a polling place is stupid. I didn't really understand how dumb until today. For our readers who aren't familiar with the Rose State system, let me describe it briefly. Your ballot arrives in the mail along with the state funded voting guide which has the language of all ballot measures, the bios of the candidates, and then paid statements by candidates and supporters/opposition. The League of Women Voters and other groups generally send things out as well. You sit around and read the guide, the newpaper endorsements and figure out who you like. I generally took a few days to vote - voting on measures one day, people another. You had all your materials in front of you while making your decisions. Once you finished, you could either add a stamp and mail your ballot or drop it off at a large number of public ballor boxes (carefully guarded of course). When the state moved to this system, voter turnout increased.

Here, I just had my ballot in my little booth (with no curtain by the way). With all of the news coverage of the presidential election, I had heard no discussion of our local, county, and state choices. I hadn't even heard many of the names. Before I opened my ballot, I didn't even know who/what was up for election here. If I had the ballot at home, I could have done some online investigations, read up about candidates for the hospital board (!), judges, and other random seats. As it was, I didn't vote for any of the candidates. What was I going to do, pick the name I thought sounded "coolest"?

I'll be requesting an absentee ballot from now on, although I need to find out the state's policies on when they count those ballots first I guess.

Voting used to be so easy.

We Get To Decide Who You Will Vote For [Part 2]

Now that was quite the experience. The caucus was really interesting. And really chaotic. By now, I'm sure you all know that Obama won the Democratic caucus. People were really excited about him; being in a college town helps, I'm sure, but that certainly isn't true for the whole state (white and rural much?).

Right from the start, we knew it would be pretty hectic. As we entered the building where our caucus was, as well as 4 or 5 other caucuses, it was packed with people, including candidate representatives handing out stickers and doing a little politicking. As we forced our way towards our room, there was a line of people four across. It went around a couple corners before disappearing into the main room. We got there plenty early, so were able to make it in the room with time to spare.

Around 6:50, they announced that they wanted to close the doors around 7, but they weren't sure if they would be able to get everyone registered and in the doors by then, so they were going to delay the start until they were ready.

Apparently, turnout was huge this year, somewhere around 12% of voters; four years ago, turnout was 6%. Four years ago, there were about 110,000 Iowans at the Democrat caucuses; this year, there were about 225,000. They were expecting 300 people to attend our caucus; about 550 people were there. I would say, the organizers were a bit unprepared and overwhelmed by the number of people. From watching the news, a lot of Independents, and even some Republicans, came to the Democrat caucuses, creating all this chaos.

Not too long after 7, the doors were closed, and the caucus started. Before we started picking candidates, we had a bunch of local 'party business' to take care of. It would have gone much smoother if the precinct presidents had read up on Robert's Rules of Order. The voting part didn't really go much smoother.

The room we were in had about 250 seats, with barely enough room between them for aisles. Add another 250-300 people standing around the room, and it was packed. Fire capacity packed.

The way the caucus works is pretty basic: go stand in the 'corner' of your candidate, then count. As most rooms only have 4 corners, and there were at least 8 choices (7 candidates plus Undecided), trouble was brewing. They wanted to separate the biggest groups (they predicted, quite accurately, that these would be Obama, Clinton, and Edwards - using polling data makes predicting the future much easier. Tell that to Trelawney), but ended up putting them all in the same half of the room. These people should be running for Congress with these problem solving skills.

Finally, they unleashed us. I was leaning towards Obama, but went to the undecided corner - I just wanted to experience the moving around the room, the being approached by different candidate reps, and civics in process. I thought Kimberly was going to go with Hillary - she'd been talking about her the last few weeks - but she went straight to the Obama camp (I'll let her explain her reasoning, if she wants), along with about half the people in the room.

When they started counting people, I was on the far side of the room from Kimberly and the Obama camp. Every other group in the room was done counting before the Obama group - it ended up with just under half the people in the room. Pretty much every other group, except the other top two, were deemed not viable (you need 15% of the vote to be considered viable, which in our caucus was around 80 people, which apparently is abnormally high. Hillary wasn't even viable in Grinnell, which is home to a small Liberal Arts college.] Then, some horse trading of votes began, which I didn't really understand, and didn't really seem to go anywhere (this summary of some of the Des Moines area caucuses has a better description of the horse trading of votes).

I was expecting more people to come up to me to try to convince me to go to their group. But whenever someone talked to me, and I voiced a concern about their candidate, they were just like, 'whatever' and walked away. Aren't they supposed to try to convince me and assuage my concerns? I was slightly annoyed.

I eventually worked my way back over the the Obama camp, where I was counted with the rest - in the end, more than half the caucus was on the Obama side. Clinton and Edwards pretty much split the other half.

Kimberly and I went out for a celebratory ice cream (actually, frozen custard). I was pretty invigorated by the whole thing, despite the lack of preparation by the organizers. I think Kimberly was annoyed by the process, which is understandable: it was disorganized, chaotic, suppresses participation, and voids all secrecy in the voting process. But other than that, there's really nothing to not like.

We Get To Decide Who You Will Vote For [Part 1]

In just over an hour, Kimberly and I will be attending our very first Iowa Caucus where we will get to decide who you eventually vote for. Other than the one time I voted in Seattle, this is the first time my vote will actually count for something; growing up in always-Democrat-Massachusetts somewhat minimizes the worth of your vote.

This is the biggest thing going in Iowa, except for the State Fair. It's basically been the lead story on the news every single night since we moved here. If we had been more motivated, we could have met almost all of the candidates - Obama, Clinton, Richardson, Romney, and a handful of the others were in town just over the last few days.

I always thought it was kind of weird that Iowa was the first chooser-of-the-President places. It's kind of a small state, with a pretty small population. It's also really, really white. And rural. The 'First-in-the-Nation' status of Iowa is why farm subsidies will never go away and why inefficient corn-based ethanol is being forced down our throats.

On top of that, the caucus-concept is a pretty strange thing. I could try to explain it, but this interactive piece from the Boston Globe does a much better job than I ever could. Basically, we'll be going to a big room (a lot of the caucuses are held in people's houses, especially in really rural towns), standing in a corner, and talking about the candidates. There's no absentee balloting and all the voting is public (both remnants from the days of Town Meetings and the like). Add to that the fact that it could last for 2-3 hours, and the caucus is even weirder. But I hear they usually serve punch and dessert, so that's nice.

But having lived here for 5 months now, I realize that the Iowa Caucus is more important than I originally thought. Iowans take this stuff seriously Really seriously. They view the caucus as their opportunity to vet every candidate for the benefit of the rest of the country. They ask every question, push every button, and turn over every rock. And the state is pretty evenly balanced Republican-Democrat (it's a Purple State), so both sides get the same thorough review.

I still have no idea who I'm voting for. I don't think Kimberly does either. I might just use totally arbitrary criteria: we met Chris Dodd, so he's got a point; Obama sent us a Christmas card, so he gets a point; someone wrote a hip-hop song for Kucinich, so he's got that. Maybe I'll just pick whichever candidate has the best snacks at their table. Or whoever has the most people at the start (aka popularity). Totally arbitrary seems about right: I'm pretty sure that's how the rest of the country chooses, so why not.

I'll check in later on with a summary wrap up. And since the process is all public anyways, maybe I'll let you know who we voted for.