Wendell Berry for president!

Well, good for you. I just have one question. To paraphrase Bishop Chaput, in the afterlife, when you meet those children who have been aborted, (and you will), will you be able to defend your "hopeless gesture" to them?

Berry had a vote from here in California as well.

I got to the polling place just after 6am. I voted at 7:55, after around 500 others. When I left, the line was as long as it was when I got there. Although it's a little inconvenient, I had sentimental patriotic feelings that so many people put up with the inconvenience out of a sense of patriotic duty. It seems like with a good president (if we ever got one), such an attitude could really be led into achieving something worthwhile.

I was not required to show ID, and I thought to myself, "So THIS is how dead people vote!"

Whoo Hoo! Rod Voted.

I participated in early voting this year.

If only Mr. Berry was running.

"too bad that many Democratic voters will just choose the Democrat because there's a D behind the candidate's name."

Rod, I live probably two precincts over from you, so we had pretty much the same ballot in front of us. I believe, sadly, that there voters from both parties of guilty of this, not just Democrats.

No option to write in a candidate here in Kansas, at least not so far as I can tell. Too bad. Rod, the Wendell Berry vote is genius. Good for you.

For me...well, it's going to be Obama. I cast that vote with deep reservations and conflicted feelings, but in the end, I'm throwing my hat in for him all the same.

I, for one would be quite happy to have Wendell Berry as POTUS, although I join Matt K in doubting he'd accept it. Also, Matt, are you saying people should be disenfranchised just because they're dead? ;) My sister lives in Chicago, where we joke that they don't discriminate in voting based on race, creed, party, or death.

On a more serious note, I am so glad it's going to be over, and I hope that, whatever the results, we all can move on and get some kind of healing, politically and economically, in this country.

Not to rain on your parade Rod:

http://www.elliscountypress.com/news/132/ARTICLE/2672/2008-10-27.html

If a voter marks in a name in the write-in blank that is not on this list, that particular portion of the ballot will not be counted, according to the Ellis County Elections Department.

State of Texas Write-In Candidates
President/Vice President

Jonathan Allen/Jeffrey D. Stath
Chuck Baldwin/Darrell L. Castle
Thaddaus Hill/Gordon F. Bailey
Alan Keyes/Marvin Sprouse Jr.
Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente
Brian Moore/Stewart A. Alexander
Ralph Nader/Matt Gonzalez

Dayum, MZ. You shore did rain on Rod's parade, even though it's warm and sunny here in Big-D little-a double-l a s.

He'll need TWO Heinekens when he reads that and cries in his beer.

I remember the election of 1968, when my mother brought me and my two sisters with her while she went to vote for Nixon, and we had to wait in the car by ourselves for over an hour. I remember thinking that this must be REALLY important, because we could see all those people waiting on the slow moving line through the window of our town hall.

That's kind of how it felt today, when I went to vote proudly, joyously, with my partner for Obama. (He was going to skip it because he feels the electoral college makes our individual votes meaningless, but he cam as a favor to me.) We got there at 6:55a.m. and the line at our polling place was out the door and halfway down the block. We chatted with the other people on line, some with their kids, and it was quite a festive, if chaotic atmosphere. One fellow was quite upset because his name was not in the register, but otherwise people with registration issues were voting by paper ballot quite cooperatively.

I hardly ever vote a straight ticket, and today was the same. I voted for Obama on the Working Families ticket here in NY, some Democrat and some Republican judges, depending on what I knew of them, and left blank those for which there was no choice but I feel are just too rank, stupid or corrupt to vote for.

The whole thing took an hour. Seeing our neighbors and feeling the electricity was well worth the wait.

No voting story to tell. Things went smoothly and quickly.
But I'm curious about this from BrianB: "I just have one question. To paraphrase Bishop Chaput, in the afterlife, when you meet those children who have been aborted, (and you will), will you be able to defend your "hopeless gesture" to them?"
What exactly does this mean? Is it that all of the aborted children (from now on?) will be waiting in line to discuss matters with those who did not vote for McCain?
I'm being snarky, but serious. I have no idea what this weird formulation means. But somehow I don't suspect that afterlife is filled with people just waitin' to talk to me or Rod or anyone about how we voted.
I'm also amazed that BrianB says with assurance "and you will." I have never known another man who could tell me exactly what will happen in the afterlife, other than what's described at the end of Revelation.

In NYC, where my vote doesn't amount to much, I voted for the state/local folks but left the presidential lever where it was. So disappointed and frustrated with what the Republican party has become, but can't fathom a one-party government at this particular time. That Pelosi/Frank/Dodd will continue to handle the banking debacle, all the while encouraging the general public's intellectually lazy assumption that the Republicans were solely to blame for this mess, makes me ill. Hopefully, Republicans will start accepting responsibility, now that they're so thoroughly banished from Washington and have all that free time on their hands. And maybe, with no one left to blame, Americans will start to figure out that both sides of the aisle are culpable. I don't want to hear one more lecture about joining hands in a warm, fuzzy bi-partisan kumbaya fest. I want someone to stand up and say, "I am part of the problem and I'm going to take responsibility for it." Neither candidate came close to saying it. Which left me with no one to vote for.

Beth,

There is no requirement for English as the official language of the United States. Some states have enacted such provisions but then states like Hawaii are officially bi-lingual, where English and Native Hawaiian are official languages. There is a federal law, the Voting Rights Act, that provides bilingual provisions which guarantee minority-language voting materials in certain jurisdictions. In my county that actually means we have ballots in English and Mandarin Chinese...

My kids are off from school today, so we all went to vote. I was feeling grumpy going into vote. I really can't explain it. My kids kept talking about how McCain was going to win. My daughter said that she and another little boy were the only 2 in their class that would vote for Obama.(Translation: they were the only 2 children with parents who were going to vote for Obama). They all agreed that there was just no way that Obama was going to win. Anyway, I was grumpy.

So....I'm pulling into the place where we're voting and a senior citizen pulls out in front of me and nearly hits my car. I say, "Old drivers suck! I wish they'd get off of the road." It gets worse. I'm pulling into the parking area, and I say, "Republicans suck!" My boy starts laughing. He says, "MOM! I think that lady read your lips. You should have seen the look on her face." I should have felt shame, but I didn't. So.... we're standing in a long line and my son says that something "sucks." I say, "How many times do I have to tell you not to say that word? I don't like that word!"

Well, I'm feeling grumpy. My kids are on my nerves. They're impatient. Then a senior citizen gentleman in front of me starts telling us how good we have it because our lines aren't that long. I don't know why or how, but he put me in a really good mood. My sense of humor returned and I was happy to vote and happy to be an American. Who knows? He might have even been a Republican.

Anyway, thanks for listening. I'm not Catholic, but I can see the value of confession. Tomorrow I'll try to be a good parent and stop before I say those kinds of things to my children.

I voted for Sen. Obama, but I was tempted by this:

"In most states in the Union you can write in the Bertie Wooster/Jeeves ticket"

I can't tell you how tempted I am to do this.

Rainy and cool here in NC. Our precinct was blissfully uncrowded as the kids and I scooted in. Our next door neighbor was manning (womanning?) the help desk and the kids chatted with her as I worked my way through the various stations. I was the 872nd person to vote there today.

The lady who came in right after me was a new citizen as of last week and very excited to vote in her first election. It made me smile.

Here in Oregon, everybody votes by mail. We have no polling places. I voted two weeks ago. Sure is nice to take my time with my ballot, in the privacy of my home, free to consult reference materials on the web, etc. Especially because we always have lots of complex initiative measures on the ballot.

We voted early on Saturday morning, arrived right as the polls opened. The line was already stretched down the block from the courthouse. This was an unheared of amount of people voting early in southwestern Oklahoma. Our wait time was an hour and 45 minutes.

In front of us were two elderly black women, sisters, one walked with a cane. They stood and waited without a word of complaint. As we approached the courthouse steps, a middle aged white man helped them both up the stairs as gently as he would with his own grandmother. That was my teary, American moment.

My first presidential election ever tonight! Not much in particular to tell...apparently I'm going to lose. :-( But still, I've got suffrage. A cause for celebration anyway, I think. :-D

God bless!

I happened on this blog entry on a search to see if any Berry essays can be found online. If ever there was a man to smart enough to stay out of politics, you named him on your ballot.