A word about our democratic process

I probably don't need to remind everyone that today is election day. By now, many of you have probably voted and are at home watching the results and ready for all the political ads to go away. I must say that despite my former residence, I have never been one to be a huge political junkie. Maybe it was the move to Oregon that gave me some new perspective or heck, maybe it was the fact that we've had a president (who I admittedly did vote for the first time around) for the last eight years that has almost single-handedly put our country in the tank and severely damaged our reputation around the world. Either way, I've really been looking forward to this day and couldn't be more excited that change is coming soon.

Now that I've gotten my presidential commentary out of the way, let me say that what I'm really here to talk about is the voting process. This is something I've been thinking about a lot over the past few weeks. More specifically, it started the day we received our ballots in the mail. You see, for those who may not know, in 1998 Oregon became the first state to require that elections be conducted by mail. Today - if my Wikipedia info. is up-to-date - Oregon is still the only state that votes entirely by mail, with several counties in Washington having also switched over to mail. (Please feel free to email me if my stats are incorrect.)

According to a story I heard on NPR this morning as well as a Washington Post op-ed from 2005, voting by mail is somewhat controversial because it increases the chance of voter fraud. Yet, it also increases the voter turnout. Nearly 87 percent of Oregonians cast votes in the last presidential election, thanks in part to the ease of the voting process here.

Another argument against voting by mail is that it eliminates the communal aspect of voting. I must admit that this is something that crossed my mind a couple of times as I was filling out my ballot. Believe it or not, I have vaguely fond memories of getting up at the crack of dawn and going out to stand in line in the cold darkness of the early morning to vote for our next president before heading off to work. Sitting down and filling out my ballot at the kitchen table over a period of a couple of weeks and then dropping it off at the library didn't seem to bring quite the same level of excitement (though the library parking lot was compete madness on Sunday!). But, on the other hand as I look at the long lines on TV today - I think I'm already over it.

However, the most interesting thing I have found about this new experience is how much it changes the whole voting dynamic. Along with our ballots, we received a few "pamphlets" of information about the issues that more closely resembled college textbooks than actual pamphlets, complete with the very small print to prove it. I started flipping through these puppies and immediately felt completely overwhelmed. For starters, there were 12 measures on the ballot ranging from changing the election process to increasing prison sentences (there were two of those and you were supposed to decide which one was better, if any) to whether or not to divert more money from the lottery to public safety (supposedly taking money away from education) to changing the building permit requirements in Oregon for projects under $35K (which some groups claim is a safety issue while proponents say these groups are just concerned about losing the revenue stream). All I kept thinking as my eyeballs popped out of my head was, "Geez, I'm not sure I signed up for all this - I was just hoping to vote for a new president."

And those were just the state measures. There were five or six more issues specifically pertaining to the Portland metro jurisdiction and Washington County, where we reside. For instance, did we want to vote to provide more funding to the Oregon Zoo to update the animal spaces and provide them with more humane living conditions? Heck, that one initially seemed like a no-brainer to me, but once I started studying I found out that there was some strong opposition to the measure because it was poorly written and didn't do enough for the animals. Before I knew it, this no-brainer issue was leaving me brain dead.

Of course there were also all the candidates for office - a tight U.S. Senate race, a U.S. representative, Secretary of State, State Treasurer and I swear at least 10 local/county officials were up for re-election to the water board or some other such thing. Once I got into it, I seriously thought my head was going to explode. I hadn't studied that hard since....well, since...hmmm....well, never mind - just suffice it to say that I was very overwhelmed in my attempt to be an informed voter.

And that's where I started to become somewhat concerned about our democratic process. I thought, here I am trying to make a concerted effort but unless I sat down and read through each of the ballot measures line by line to create my very own opinion - I pretty much had to rely on the opinions/rhetoric of others (read: special interest groups). Is that the most accurate way to go about voting? I'm not so sure. Soon I found myself in this awkward predicament of feeling compelled to make choices on issues when I felt that it was nearly impossible to fully comprehend all the dynamics at play.

So, once I realized that my head was spinning with confusion over trying to understand all sides of the 10 million issues on the ballot, I did what anyone would do - I decided to cheat. Well, sort of. I said to hell with it, I'll wait to see how Jeff is going to vote because he's a pretty smart guy - what with that whole mathematical economic analysis degree and all. And then I'll finish filling out my ballot. And that's exactly what I did. I asked him every day when he was planning to fill out his ballot until finally he did it on Sunday. (Some might call it nagging, I call it encouraging his civic duty.) Then I sat down with his ballot and compared answers and where we disagreed, we discussed it. Sometimes his answer swayed me and sometimes not. And sometimes, it was just plain too late because I had already filled in my vote and there was just no way I was going to go to the trouble of getting a new ballot. There were also a few things I just did not vote on because I couldn't decide and I didn't feel it was right to cast a vote just because I could. But according to the NPR story this morning, this type of family conferring is not uncommon in voting by mail.

Now, I suppose that theoretically every voter in America goes through the same process we just went through. Sure, most of us - absentee voters aside - don't have actual ballots in hand to fill out in advance, but most people do have sample ballots and more than enough information available at their fingertips to make informed voting choices before hitting the polls on election day. Still, I can't help but think that doesn't present the same kind of urgency - for some, at least. Instead, possibly more often than not, I'm guessing that people come in cold (literally and figuratively) to a voting booth with the clock ticking, a job to be at or a family to get home to, and a long line of people behind them. (I mean, I never did that but other people might...) And somewhere along the line, I have to think that kind of decision making affects us all.

On that note, here's to American democracy and Election 2008! May the best special interests groups win. (Oh, and as for how we'll be spending our evening - we'll be glued to the TV with takeout and a bottle of pinot noir for celebrating purposes, I hope.)

Until I write again.