An Anticipated Election

Done.

2020 Hawaii Ballot
The 2020 Hawaii county ballot section for president

Ballots complete, stuffed, signed, and deposited in the drop box at the county elections service center that just opened. While decisions on the various candidates had been made quite some time ago, we had to spend some time reading to understand a few of the county charter amendments I was unfamiliar with.

I cannot recall a ballot I was so anticipating filling out or dropped in the box with such satisfaction. Even if the deeply blue Hawaiʻi result on the presidential election is already well known, filling in that box was something of a catharsis. I may have used a bit more ink than necessary to register the vote properly.

I realize I have voted in nine presidential elections across the decades. I have always made a point to vote, even in primary elections. I look back and realize that years past I often voted without much concern for which party a candidate declared, particularly in traditionally conservative Arizona where the best candidates were usually in the GOP. Those days are gone, maybe for quite a while.

Voting in Hawaii is very easy… Get the ballots in the mail, fill out at leisure, mail them in. Deb and I opted to drop them off directly to the elections office as the service center site is just a skip and hop off the main road into town.

The elections service center for the island’s west side is located in the county office complex off Kealakehe Parkway. Around back in the multi use room, easy parking, no crowd, the kind ladies manning the center will point out the box just inside the door.

Now we just have to wait 14 days for a result, and perhaps a bit more for confirmation.

Election Day

Tomorrow is election day. A day so many of us have been awaiting, and dreading. This election has seen so much rancor, so much passion, it is difficult to measure by any past standards. Tomorrow it will be over in one way, and I suspect, just starting in others.

I Voted
I Voted sticker, image credit: Wikimedia
I will not be joining the line at our local polling place. Not because I do not want to vote, but rather as I have already voted. I stopped by the Waimea Community Center last week and voted early.

This election is too important and life has a way of disturbing any plans. Not that my vote will decide the presidency, that will have already occurred by the time polls close in Hawaii. But rather it is too important to me personally. I can not abide the thought of not having voted in this election, an election where so much is at stake for our country.

There is only one acceptable outcome tomorrow… That Trump loses hard. That our country rejects hate, rejects divisiveness, rejects racism, and rejects the lies. I, like so many others, will be watching the election results very closely tomorrow, sweating the results from each battleground state. It will be a long day.