Vignette: voting day

It’s election day here in Alberta. Often we vote at the advance poll but we didn’t have all of our research done on the candidates until midweek last week. The polling place was the school just a couple of blocks away so we walked over this afternoon. I thought I might get up and get there closer to when the polls opened at 10 a.m. but that didn’t happen. 

It’s a lovely sunny day today although the temperature has just hit +11 in the last few minutes. When we got there the line up was down the hall to the doors of the school but didn’t stretch beyond. When we walked in a woman checked with us to see that we were in the right place. when we got to the door of the gym a youn man thanked Richard for having used the QR code outside the door to show that we were, indeed, in the right spot. When Richard pointed out that the code was hard to miss the young man looked skyward and said, “You’d be surprised.” I thought, but didn’t say, “No we wouldn’t, we were both teachers.”  When he got to the people behind us mentioned that he was 17 and couldn’t even vote yet. I wanted to turn to thank him but by that time he had made his way down the line. I have to think he’s a pretty amazing kid. 

At the tables where names were crossed off the lists and ballots were handed out, we met another interesting person. He had a definite accent that called out southern USA. We made small talk starting with the fact that Richard and I have different last names. He volunteered that he and his wife have different las names but that they are married and that’s what counts. One of us, I don’t remember who, thanked him for volunteering his time. He told us that he was at a wonderful peaceful place in his life now and that he just wanted to give back to this country. He called me Ma’am several times which made me wonder if he had been in the military at some point. His hair was short but not really a buzz cut. 

He proceeded with his tasks very methodically. I might say he was pokey and that is saying something, coming from me. A supervisor came up to the person beside him and told that worker that he didn’t have to fill out a particular form if he found the name on the voters’ list. That person turned to our guy and told him what the supervisor had just said. Our guy responded that he was just doing what they had told him to do in training and that it didn’t hurt to have an extra way to check that the information was correct. With that, he handed me my collection of ballots and I headed for the voting booth. 

I expected Richard to be at one of the booths when I handed my ballots in but he was at the table. I went out into the hall, read a couple of bulletin boards, had a good look at some of the paper mache birds in a display case and then went back to the door to look for Richard who was still at the table. I took a peek through the glass in the learning commons, and watched a young mother, in the hall, get her two kids organized to leave the school. 

I looked down the hall to see if Richard had made it past me when I was looking at the birds. No Richard. I looked again in the gym and saw Richard heading for the other entrance to the gym. I met him in the hallway and we headed home. On the way we talked briefly about the man behind the table. I will probably never see him again but from the tidbits I got today, he is a person with a very interesting story and I think he is one of those individuals, along with the 17 year-old volunteer, whom I will remember for some time.

Photos from our walk to vote.