Voting on election day

[T]t’s not so hard to adjust our imaginations… we can take a moment to picture a labyrinthine, sometimes obscure process in action—people and machines working together, perhaps under unpleasant circumstances, to obey our command… we might imagine a forest of gears turning, intricately enmeshed, and wonder if they’re the right gears, and if they fit as they should, and if they’ve been inspected.

–Joshua Rothman

This morning I got up early to bike to the polls, here in northern Virginia. Last night I arrived home very late, flying back from a midwestern gig, but today wanted to get ahead of any lines.  I was the only one in the house to vote today, as everyone else already did mail-in or early voting.  For me, the voting day experience is fascinating, and I wanted to see how it went in this fraught election.

(Why biking? For exercise and to reduce my carbon footprint.)

A Vermont small town election in 2016. Note the paper ballot going into the huge wooden box, like the 1800s.

I’ve been to this voting location before, but only by car, so after pumping up my tires I asked Google Maps for a route, checked it out, then hit the road.  The app and my legs soon took me along the edge of town, where I pedaled a long, uneven road which quickly changed from suburban to rural.  Next up was a complicated set of backswitches along lovely, wide sidewalks before a new pedestrian bridge cut across a highway.

Right off that highway, just past a good flower nursery, nestled between small houses was the polling site, a volunteer fire department. Its parking lot was largely empty of cars, but there were thickets of Democrat and GOP yard signs stuck into grass and dirt. The Trump/Vance signs were much better designs, featuring sharp, one- or two-word messages, while the Harris/Walz signs just had their names.

An exception was a tall, expensive-looking, vertical sign showing faces and names of Democrat candidates, all on a deep blue background:

A few people and families walked to and from vehicles in that lot, not talking to anyone else. A Harris table sat just outside the limit and featured a “veterans for Harris” poster.  Two volunteered staffed it, cheerily greeting people and handing out sample ballots.  I took one, thanked them. locked up my bike, and went inside.

Inside there wasn’t a line. Instead, volunteer staffers outnumbered voters, some standing next to six-foot-tall information boards. I identified myself easily (drivers license, stating my address), got my paper ballot, and hit my choice of carrel. The ballot was one page. I filled in its squares, then fed the paper into a scanner until it beeped approval. I took stickers and a selfie on the way out.

The volunteers told me there was a steady flow of voters and no incidents.

On the way home Google Maps sent my bike and I on a different route which turned out to be much longer. I passed some Trump signs, crossed the highway (thankfully with a light, although it was fast) and started along a rural route with long stretches of countryside alternating with a few houses.  One surprised-looking deer watched me from just a few feet away as I pedaled past.  Traffic picked up, which was challenging as the road’s shoulders disappeared.  Several times I dismounted to walk among trees, protecting myself and the bike from cars and trucks.

Back across another major road the route turned into a mix of commercial and residential blocks.  Sidewalks were plentiful and fine to bike along. I passed another voting site, a middle school where a voters’ line had formed up. Then it was subdivisions and so to home. All told the trip amounted to almost ten miles of biking.

Nearly all text at the site was bilingual, in English and Spanish.

I began this post with a quote about humans, technology, and complex interactions because that’s what occupied my mind on the ride back. I exercised my right to vote in a minute, but doing so involved an astonishing amount of systems: printing the paper ballot, scanning it in, the database behind that; securing the ballot site, staffing it, monitoring for rule violations; the whole political apparatus pouring into this event. As I panted through traffic I was conscious of the vast industrial complexity shuttling us to and fro. We often proceed through that complexity at speed, focused on our tasks, yet my slower, lower tech route brought home the multiple levels of embedded systems, within which we made the elections happen.

I hope all readers are well.  If you’re in the United States, I hope you voted. Be safe and sound.