by Pa Rock
Involved Citizen
Missouri's primary election is next Tuesday, but not being one to wait until the last minute for something as important as voting, I cast an absentee ballot yesterday afternoon. Missouri doesn't have "early voting" per se, but it does have a loosey-goosey absentee voting system where all the potential voter has to do is show up at the county clerk's office, tell an official there that he or she will be out of town on Election Day, declare a party preference, and vote. The clerk's office is less than three miles from my front door, and the process is exceptionally easy.
(Twelve years ago I cast an absentee ballot in Christian County, Kentucky. It was essentially the same process, but that county clerk was very protective of her ballots. She questioned me - at length - about why I needed to vote absentee, and she wanted to know where I planned to be on Election Day. Voting there was an arduous process - as it was apparently intended to be.)
Our state does have a new voter ID law which requires showing up with a government-issued photo ID such as a driver's license, a law passed by our hillbilly legislature a few years ago to frustrate voting by minorities in the Kansas City and St. Louis metro areas. Our current secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, has had radio spots going for the past several weeks touting the law as some sort of beacon of purity for democracy. I had my ID at the ready but was not asked for it by county officials - obviously a benefit of white privilege.
Missouri does not register voters by party, and a person is free to choose the ballot of any party when he or she shows up at a primary election. In this area, as well as across most of the Ozarks and rural Missouri, few Democrats run for office and most of the real races are in the Republican primaries. While I consider myself a Democrat of the Franklin Roosevelt stripe, I often vote Republican in the primaries in order to mess with the opposition and put the fork in some of their more fascist candidates.
Yesterday, however, I chose the Democratic ballot. There was only one race on the ballot, the one for U.S. Senator, which featured our incumbent, Claire McCaskill, and six or seven other aspirants. I wanted to send a message to Claire with my vote - and I did.
Each party ballot also contained one Constitutional Amendment - Proposition A - a plan to make the phony, union-busting "Right-to-Work" the law of the land in the Show Me state. I voted "no" on Prop A - proudly.
Two notes of interest about the actual process of casting an absentee ballot. First, the clerk asked for my date of birth - instead of my name. I gave her the day, month, and year and then she swiftly banged that information into her computer. "Are you Curt?" she asked. Instead of saying "No, but I am sometimes moderately impolite," I told her that I was "Rocky." "Oh," she replied, looking at her computer screen again, "there you are!" And then she gave me a ballot. Apparently there is some old codger named Curt in Howl County who was born on the exact same day as me. Perhaps we should start a club.
The other thing of interest was that absentee voting is apparently fairly popular. There was one other person voting while I marked my ballot. At the end of the process voters put their ballots in large brown envelopes, remove a strip of paper from the flap, and then seal the envelope with the adhesive affixed the flap. A wastebasket is nearby in which to drop the strip of paper that had been protecting the adhesive seal on the flap. As I dropped my strip into the basket, I noticed that there were at least twenty-to-thirty others already there.
With the waste paper as a sign, I predict a heavy primary turnout in Missouri next week. Most of the ballots that get voted will be Republican - in this heavy Trump state - but the loyal opposition will show up too. I already have.
Involved Citizen
Missouri's primary election is next Tuesday, but not being one to wait until the last minute for something as important as voting, I cast an absentee ballot yesterday afternoon. Missouri doesn't have "early voting" per se, but it does have a loosey-goosey absentee voting system where all the potential voter has to do is show up at the county clerk's office, tell an official there that he or she will be out of town on Election Day, declare a party preference, and vote. The clerk's office is less than three miles from my front door, and the process is exceptionally easy.
(Twelve years ago I cast an absentee ballot in Christian County, Kentucky. It was essentially the same process, but that county clerk was very protective of her ballots. She questioned me - at length - about why I needed to vote absentee, and she wanted to know where I planned to be on Election Day. Voting there was an arduous process - as it was apparently intended to be.)
Our state does have a new voter ID law which requires showing up with a government-issued photo ID such as a driver's license, a law passed by our hillbilly legislature a few years ago to frustrate voting by minorities in the Kansas City and St. Louis metro areas. Our current secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, has had radio spots going for the past several weeks touting the law as some sort of beacon of purity for democracy. I had my ID at the ready but was not asked for it by county officials - obviously a benefit of white privilege.
Missouri does not register voters by party, and a person is free to choose the ballot of any party when he or she shows up at a primary election. In this area, as well as across most of the Ozarks and rural Missouri, few Democrats run for office and most of the real races are in the Republican primaries. While I consider myself a Democrat of the Franklin Roosevelt stripe, I often vote Republican in the primaries in order to mess with the opposition and put the fork in some of their more fascist candidates.
Yesterday, however, I chose the Democratic ballot. There was only one race on the ballot, the one for U.S. Senator, which featured our incumbent, Claire McCaskill, and six or seven other aspirants. I wanted to send a message to Claire with my vote - and I did.
Each party ballot also contained one Constitutional Amendment - Proposition A - a plan to make the phony, union-busting "Right-to-Work" the law of the land in the Show Me state. I voted "no" on Prop A - proudly.
Two notes of interest about the actual process of casting an absentee ballot. First, the clerk asked for my date of birth - instead of my name. I gave her the day, month, and year and then she swiftly banged that information into her computer. "Are you Curt?" she asked. Instead of saying "No, but I am sometimes moderately impolite," I told her that I was "Rocky." "Oh," she replied, looking at her computer screen again, "there you are!" And then she gave me a ballot. Apparently there is some old codger named Curt in Howl County who was born on the exact same day as me. Perhaps we should start a club.
The other thing of interest was that absentee voting is apparently fairly popular. There was one other person voting while I marked my ballot. At the end of the process voters put their ballots in large brown envelopes, remove a strip of paper from the flap, and then seal the envelope with the adhesive affixed the flap. A wastebasket is nearby in which to drop the strip of paper that had been protecting the adhesive seal on the flap. As I dropped my strip into the basket, I noticed that there were at least twenty-to-thirty others already there.
With the waste paper as a sign, I predict a heavy primary turnout in Missouri next week. Most of the ballots that get voted will be Republican - in this heavy Trump state - but the loyal opposition will show up too. I already have.
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