How I was Almost Disenfranchised in the California Democratic Primary and Why Lots of Californians Probably Were, Too
Voting is a big deal to me. Since childhood, well before I could vote, I routinely joined my parents, who were politically active in our small Pennsylvania town, participate in the election process. My dad volunteered at the polling station. My mom often made homemade doughnuts and coffee for volunteers and voters. Both attended party meetings, talked with candidates, read news reports about candidates’ qualifications and their proposed policies with a gusto that animated our dinner table in and out of election seasons. I walked the neighborhood with my dad handing out flyers for Jimmy Carter and, god bless him, Mike Dukakis, and echoed his get-out-the-vote encouragements. I sat with my mom as she helped to register voters at tables at the local Legion Hall or in the elementary school gymnasium.
Voting in my family was more than a big deal. It was a civic sacrament of self-transcending significance that is hard-wired into my very being. It is how, probably more than anything else, I understand myself as American.
So, of course I was up to head to the polls on Tuesday, which I prefer to do in person. I like seeing my neighbors wending their way through the voting line. I like feeling the embodied practice of democracy in…
