Since 1976, I have always voted on Election Day. But two things changed my mind this time.
One, the weather forecast for Tuesday calls for a lot of rain and with turnout expected to be high, that would mean standing outside and getting wet. No thanks.
Two, Missouri now — for the first time — gives voters the opportunity to use “no excuse absentee voting.” In other words, early voting. My wife and I took advantage of that Friday, a beautiful blue sky sunny day.
First, we checked St. Louis County’s “Absentee Satellite Site Lookup” website, which reports approximately how many people are in line at various locations. At 1:30pm, the lowest number we saw was over 300 at a public library a few miles away. We waited another hour for the lunchtime crowd to go back to work, then drove to the polling place. When we arrived at 2:45pm, the website number was 139 people, which still meant a line that snaked through the library, around the corner, up through the parking lot, and around another corner.
As we joined the queue, I started taking mental notes about the scene.
There were a lot more women in line than men, which might be significant in Kamala’s favor because she needs white suburban women to bolster her totals. One issue that might impact be energizing them is Amendment 3, which would make the choice to have an abortion a constitutional right in Missouri. The Republican legislature did everything it could to prevent the matter from going to a vote, but there it is. I’ve said all year this single issue might be enough to turn the tide. Missouri is now a deeply red state, but stranger things have happened.
The extremist right wing isn’t even bothering to argue that women shouldn’t have the right to choose. Instead, they’re playing the fear card — as they do on nearly every issue. Around the library, I spotted a few of their lawn signs reading: “No on 3. No tax paid child sex surgery.” I don’t understand the “no tax paid” portion. Do they want to pay taxes on child sex surgery — which isn’t even a thing? They’re very confused, partly because their Dear Leader has been warning that their children might go to school one day and come back as another gender. Which has never happened, but that’s another one of those pesky facts so easily ignored by the ignorant.
This conspiracy theory is more bizarre than the one from 2016 which claimed Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza joint in Washington, DC. Somehow, these weirdos have convinced themselves schools now have operating rooms in which gender confirmation surgery is being conducted. Hell, most public schools can’t afford to have a nurse on staff, yet these nut jobs think they have surgical teams standing by to castrate eight-year-old Timmy.
Such thinking isn’t confined to lawn signs. While there was no one making trouble while we were waiting in line, I was told that earlier in the day, some guy spent an hour and a half yelling evidence-free claims about Amendment 3. At one point, an OBGYN who was in line shouted back that he was didn’t know what he was talking about. Things got a bit heated before the parties were separated.
I heard that story from Joe Pereles, a Democrat running for state senate, who was greeting people in line and asking for their votes. I also ran into another Democratic candidate, Ray Hartmann, who’s running against longtime incumbent (and overwhelming favorite) Republican congresswoman Ann Wagner. Ray was the founder of The Riverfront Times, the alternative weekly in St. Louis, and is a longtime panelist on the local public TV show, “Donnybrook.” He also had a nighttime talk show on KTRS, my old stomping grounds, although our timelines never crossed. That made him one of the few voices of reason in the cesspool of political talk that dominates talk radio — a good prerequisite for Congress.
I told them both I would vote for them, along with all the other blue candidates, and they moved on to say hello to other voters. in case you’re wondering, they are allowed to do this as long as they are not within 25 feet of the polling place, which they weren’t.
After 75 minutes, we finally made it to the front of the line and were handed ballots. We sat down to mark our choices, then slid our completed ballots into the scanning machines, slapped on our “I Voted” stickers, and headed back outside to notice the line was twice as long as when we’d arrived. A volunteer helping newcomers find parking spaces told me it had been this way for the entire two weeks of early voting. Oops, I mean “no excuse absentee voting.”
Frankly, I enjoyed the experience so much I’m gonna go back and do it again tomorrow! Right after I deliver a big box of scalpels and gauze to the elementary school down the block.