When I think of the word “franchise”, McDonald’s comes to mind. Except on Election Day, when I get a chance to exercise my own franchise in the only poll that counts. Since the mechanics of Election Day are much the same throughout our land, there is a universality about it. At the same time, nobody experiences the process in exactly the same way.
Nobody (except me) lives at the dead-end of Edwards Road in our small backwater village of Hampton; no one else travels the half mile to Estabrook Road and turns right to the bottom of the hill where Station Road joins. No one else joins Hampton’s main artery, Route 97, at 7a.m. this Election Day to travel through our lineal village of 19th century homes to the small boxlike Town Hall.
And I am reasonably sure that no one else muses exactly as I muse on this day of decisions. In the five-minute journey from my rural place to the bustling Town Hall, I have time to recall the biggest voting mistake of my life. Protesting against the Democratic Party for not producing a candidate who could win, I cast my 1984 ballot for socialist Norma. M. Thomas, thus denying Harry S. Truman my support.
I pledged then never to make that error again. Yet here I was agonizing whether to help prevent a John G. Rowland victory by going for the front runner, Lowell P. Weiker Jr., or vote my beliefs and support Bruce A Morrison.
I enter the Town Hall and look for Becky Dean, the explainer of the voting machine. For years Becky has been trying to get me to listen to her little talk. I always divert her by asking about her family. But Becky is away and so Laurie Berard has taken her place. I tell Laurie I know the drill and proceed to give my street and name to Arlene Brunell and Eunice Gluck, the official checkers.
I greet Jim Fox, the moderator, Claire Winters and Eunice Fuller, the registrars, and Peggy Fox, the town clerk. Though we are only a one-booth town, there is almost never a waiting line and I enter the booth’s sanctity without feeling hurried. Most of us want to keep it this way. In this very booth, I voted for a planning board member who promised to maintain Hampton’s rural character by population control; he would have removed all road signs pointing to Hampton
Among other choices, I take Courant columnist Don Noel’s advice and pull down the slot over the sheriff nominations. I write in “reform” and put away the pencil I had brought for the purpose. (I remember the days before we had voting machines when a pencil was the means of casting ballots and you had to use the one provided). A voting machine is a complicated mechanism; it took Maurice Bisson two hours the night before to prepare it. Maurice keeps the tradition of Bill Hoffman, the voting machine preparer before him, and refuses payment.
Artfulness in politics is not for me. The three-way race for governor tempts one to make compromises. In the end, I stick to my pledge and vote for Morrison.
On the way out, I am struck by the sartorial diversity of the voters. There are the suited types headed for bank jobs, the windbreaker set for construction sites, joggers in shorts, and Lois Kelley in her granny dress. She is going to her job as a storyteller at Sturbridge Village. I remind her that we still have her butter dish from the last meeting of Earthcare, our local conservation organization.
Well, it is over for another year. They say that only 40 percent of registered voters nationally go to the polls. This means that almost no candidate wins with a majority of eligible voters any more, and that bodes ill for our system of government. But Hampton, our little hill town in northeastern Connecticut, is doing its part with a high voter turnout – nearly 70 percent – and that, it seems to me, is not bad for the turnip-truck crowd.
Thomas A. Gaines, 1990