How to Count

It's not just a numbers game

Our daughter Q called us from college several weeks ago to ask: “I’m not sure which return address I should put on my absentee ballot.” She had requested her ballot from the NYC Board of Elections about as early as she could and was worried that it wouldn’t arrive. When it finally did, she followed the included instructions for completing and mailing it back to NYC, but none of the bullet points mentioned whether she should put her current (college) address in the upper left or her permanent address. We didn’t know either, and spent some time scouring .org websites for an answer. In the end, Q went with her college address and mailed it in. She checked the NYC elections website each day until she saw confirmation that her ballot was received and valid. (And then checked a few times after that.) She wanted to get it right. This was important.

This year is the first that all four of us can vote for president. My wife and I voted early, waiting on line for half an hour with a bunch of folks using the beautiful weather to talk around their anxiety about the election. As we were leaving our early-voting site, we saw a woman waiting on line, her arms linked tightly with (ostensibly) a daughter on either side of her, looking profoundly determined. We could relate; I voted so hard that my complimentary pen nearly broke through the earth’s crust.

Our son M is back in school in New York and had midterms, performances, and rehearsals for the two bands he’s playing guitar for these days. It’s easy to keep putting off voting until it’s too late, and we talked with him about a plan. After his last midterm, my son went with my wife to our early voting site. It was a beautiful afternoon, unusually warm, and the line was short. As M was being helped by a poll worker, he mentioned that he was a first-time voter for president. The poll worker broke into a giant smile and said “first-time voter here,” and workers and voters alike clapped and congratulated him.

I’ve tried not to think about the election and its stakes, which had to give way to trying not to think about it all the time. I believe strongly that our commitments to others must go beyond whether we have personal connections to them, but so many people in my life, those whom I love and serve, fall out of MAGA’s definition of “American” or even “person.” After nearly 10 years of Trump, I feel exhausted of reasons to provide in favor of human dignity. My spade is turned — at this point I simply don’t know how to convince some people to care about others, to see those different from them as worthy of respect and grace. Voting seems somehow both a powerful and slight way to meet this moment, an action that counts toward the collective determining of the welfare of hundreds of millions, but one after which you get some ice cream or a smoothie or whatever.

We are the kind of creatures for which who we think we are depends heavily upon who we think we can be. And who we think we can be hinges importantly upon who we see respected and acting in the world. Our kids have seen few people who look and think like them, and those around them, in charge of their lives at the federal level for so long, and they’ve often felt forgotten or ignored or worse. At least now they can participate officially in choosing, and this year, this first, counts for them.

I don’t know what will happen with this election. I don’t trust my feelings — my heart is a Pandora’s jar from which hope has long leaked, and as with Pandora, hope’s escape is a mixed bag. But I keep coming back to the way the workers and voters cheered M at the polls. Civic engagement and its obligations should be filled with joy.

Thanks, NYC poll workers and voters. M will remember that moment for every election for the rest of his life. Do what you can to care for others. Find joy in something larger than yourself. And then breathe, hang on.