Dreaming of the Vote

I have been dreaming about voting--literally, asleep at night, dreaming.  In one dream, I had to burn the edges of my ballot before I could turn it in.  In another dream, I was standing in line wishing I had taken advantage of early voting.

Readers of this blog will know that I did take advantage of early voting.  The day after we dropped our ballots in the secured box, I went to the website where you can track your ballot, and it said that my ballot had been sent to me, but it hadn't been received back or counted.  I had a moment of panic, but then I reminded myself that I had just dropped it off 30 hours earlier, so it might not have made it back to the collection center to be scanned.

Let me interject here to say I have no idea what happens to the ballots--is the secure box emptied every day?  I assume so, but I don't know how often the ballots are collected.  But I have great faith in my county--it's one of the Florida counties that gave the whole nation headaches in the 2000 election, but those problems seem to have been solved.  Even in the year 2000, I still thought that the officials were doing the best that they could under very difficult circumstances.  But I am glad that we changed the voting machines.

On Monday, I decided to check again.  My ballot has been received and counted--hurrah!

A week from now, how many of us will be able to say the same thing?  We are on track to have record turnout.  I'll be interested to know how many of us vote early and how many of us wait until election day. 

It is hard for me to imagine that Trump will win.  I've seen too many of his groups that should have been his supporters turn away.  I've seen that he's not reaching out to get new supporters or win over new groups.

But I've felt this way before, so I hesitate to make predictions.  Honestly, I won't feel completely calm until the electoral college meets in December and casts their votes.  With two candidates as elderly as these, so much can happen, and then we're in unprecedented, perhaps very dangerous, territory.

And so here I am, waiting to exhale, as I've been waiting to exhale for years now--or is it decades?  Waiting, waiting, visualizing good outcomes.