I voted today. The "early voting center" is downtown, where I like to go occasionally anyway to see the sites I saw every day back when I was arguably a Productive Member of Society, and I took along a book to read at the Federal Café, in the federal courthouse, nice floor-to-ceiling windows there and, midmorning, never any customers, the pleasantest place I know to make a cup of coffee last for an hour. I'd seen a report on TV about how Republicans are ahead in the early voting and my unconscious motive might have been to help catch up.
I don't think our president would have cared for the scene at the Minneapolis early voting center. I was handed an Application for Ballot by a League-of-Women-Voters type who, of all the people I saw there, voters and poll workers, was besides me the only white person of mature years. It was like the dreaded caravan in miniature. Only one pissed off old white guy and his anger was all in the wrong direction! I handed off my Application to a young woman wearing the traditional dress of some African nation whose English sounded to a native ear a little London-like. I'm saying she hadn't made her way to Minneapolis from Hibbing. She tapped around on her computer for about a minute before handing me a ballot, which she turned over to display all the judicial races on the back side, telling me with a smile that "of course" I could vote in as many or as few of the contests as I wished. I had done enough research to know I wanted to vote in all of them. Here is a sincere pro-tip to fellow residents of Hennepin County, Minnesota. All but two of the judicial races are uncontested. In those two, the challenger is in both cases a crackpot. Vote for the incumbent judges, it's not like the whole country has gone to shit and no one is doing their job. When I was done, I checked my work, placed the ballot in the envelope the new American had given me, and signed in front of another new American, who witnessed my signature. Then I handed it all in to a standard-issue African-American woman who thanked me for voting while peeling off an "I Voted" sticker, which I stuck on my sweater and headed for the café. Trump always tells journalists that his administration is "humming like a well-oiled machine" but I think the phrase could be applied more aptly to the early voting center.
The café was a bit of a let down. When I've been there before, it was always for moments stolen from work, maybe lounging at a window table after an early morning dental appointment before forcing myself up to trudge across the street for the first superfluous meeting of the day, and the contrast with the grim work place had in my mind transformed the café into a Taj Mahal of earthly delights. Now that I could stay for as long as I wanted, it wasn't as great as I'd remembered. It did occur to me, while looking dully out the window, that the title of the book I'm reading, Exit Ghost, is probably taken from a stage direction in Macbeth--the scene at the banquet wherein only Macbeth can see the murdered king's ghost, so of course he's freaking out, forcing his wife to make excuses for his bizarre behavior, and then [Exit ghost]: a temporary relief.
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