4:30 am: Get up, check e-mail to find out which polling places I will be monitoring in Janesville, Wisc., as part of the Bellwether Program. The Bellwether Program, just one of the endeavors of American Coming Together ( ACT ) , was designed to monitor the number of voters turning out at a particular ward so that if voter turnout is low there, canvassers can encourage people there to vote. I am monitoring wards 14-16. Whatever happens, I tell myself, at least I know I did my part.
5:10 am: We are supposed to blend in with the crowd. Does this mean, in Janesville, shower or no shower? I opt on the side of cleanliness.
5:30 am: Make coffee for my gal, who must go to work today and cannot join me. {:~ ( Then, run around like a loon only partially dressed, feeding the dogs, gathering all of the little items I might need for a long day in a strange town—change of clothes ( what if there's a downpour? ) , books to read, cans of cola in case I need a shot of caffeine, a Nalgene full of water—and crunching large hunks of peanut butter toast as I pull on my jeans and tie my shoes.
6:00 am: Kiss Kathy goodbye and leave the house a half hour late.
6:05 am: Run back into the house for the cooler. 'How was Wisconsin?' Kathy calls from the other room. 'Great,' I say. We crack each other up.
6:10 am: Stop at the local Starbucks for my secret sauce: a white mocha. Eric, our favorite barista is there. 'What are you doing here so early?' he asks. I tell him about Janesville and the Bellwether Program. He tells me his aunt tried to get him up the day before ( Nov. 1 ) to go to a John Kerry rally in Milwaukee, but he couldn't get his butt out of bed. The other woman working says she must go to a far Western suburb to vote. 'It will be worth it,' I say. We agree that we must seek a change in the White House. 'So Eric,' I say, 'you are going to vote, aren't you.' 'Oh, yeah!' he says.
6:15 am: I get in the long line for the on-ramp to the Kennedy Expressway, bob and weave across several lanes of rush-hour traffic so I can get on I-90, and crawl past O'Hare airport.
6: 40-ish am: Mecca! Aka Ikea. No stopping there today! I head for the open road, buzzing by small towns and corn fields, listening to encouraging reports on NPR about people who never voted before who are heckbent on voting this time around. NPR fades just after the Rockford, Ill., clock tower, and I switch to the 'Take Back the White House' CD that Kathy burned for me. 'The revolution starts now,' sings Steve Earle.
8:00 am: The Janesville exit! I don't really know where I'm going ( it's actually one of four Janesville exits, a sign tells me ) , but I remember seeing Racine Street on one of my maps and get off there. Minutes later, I find the Hedberg Library, which is the polling place for ward 14. This becomes my home base: there's a restroom, WiFi hookup, and a view of the Rock River, which moves quickly beneath a darkly clouded autumnal sky. A flock of nuns all in white drifts out from the polling place as I look for parking. I've missed a message from my ACT coordinator and leave a VoiceMail message that I've arrived at my designated location. My first task is to find the LED display on the machine into which the ballots are fed and drive to my next polling place to see how long it takes and make sure I know where it is when I must do my first check. Minutes later, I am at Wilson Elementary, where wards 15 and 16 are voting.
8:20 am: I call Kathy and we share encouraging voter stories we've heard.
8:45 am: I pull back into the library parking lot, eat some breakfast. 'The people have the power,' sings Patti Smith.
9:25 am: Into the library, where I do a quick check of e-mail.
9:45 am: My first official poll check! I jot down the number, get in the car, drive to Wilson Elementary, check the voter number there, head back to the car, and call the automated 800 number to record my counts.
10:15 am: Back to the library, where I take up residence at the big windows by the river, do a little writing, a little e-mail checking, monitor the line at this polling place ( nearly nonexistent, now that everyone's at work! ) , a little more writing.
12:50 pm: I check the ward 14 numbers again, then head off to the ward 15/16 polling place and phone in my counts. I drive around a bit, seeing if I can spot a likely place to eat, but Hardee's just isn't going to do it for me, a vegetarian, and Dairy Queen on top of my earlier white mocha seems a little too giddily surgary to me—don't want to run manically through the library, then throw myself on the floor of the polling area in a fit of weeping! So I return to the library parking lot overlooking the river and eat some cold pizza and listen to my CD. 'No retreat, baby, no surrender.' We are so taking out Bush!
1:30 pm: I'm thinking I'll take advantage of the break between poll checks to do a little cosmetic surgery on my novel, but shortly after opening the document, it feels like I've got a live squirrel in my pocket: oops—it's my cell phone on vibrate. It's the ACT office in Milwaukee, calling to make sure all is going well and asking if I'd like to be locked in a polling place while they count the votes there. It's not clear to me whether this is for my benefit ( 'how exciting to hear the results after the largest voter turnout in Wisconsin history, right there, first' ) or whether they need me there for some reason. If it's for my own enjoyment, I'd rather go hear the news at home with Kathy while I'm sitting on the couch in my pj's! But I tell the woman I feel like a slacker, and I do: all this time in the nice warm library when I know other volunteers are trudging hither and yon in the chill fall weather trying to boot people out of their houses and into the voting booth. Still, it doesn't seem like a good enough reason to hang out two hours from home until 9 pm or later on a 'school night.'
2:00 pm: I'm curious about Janesville's gay life, so I do a Web search. A gay community center is listed, but there's no Web site to say what they offer. I find turnleft.com, where a controversy is brewing about whether Janesville is liberal. Most comments indicate it's a small town with a small-town mentality ( i.e., not esp. liberal ) , but one incensed woman asserts she and her lover 'immediately made friends [ when they moved there ] who ... include gay and straight people.' 'To say Janesville is hostile to gay people is nonsense. Among the most prominent and respected citizens are a number of gay people.' Wonder who's right.
3:50 pm: My second to last poll check. Then I'm off to find a good cup of coffee and a cookie, a little afternoon pick-me-up.
4:45 pm: Mission half accomplished—good cookie, bad coffee at Mrs. Field's in the mall.
5:50 pm: Last poll check. As I leave the second polling place, a van with ACT signs taped to it pulls up and drops people off. Apparently, the system is working! After I phone in my numbers, I take off the foil and tape covering up my political bumpers stickers. Then I hit the highway home.
6:40 pm: Queen Latifah's silky sounds on The Dana Owens Album match the velvety darkness. 'If I Had You' comes on and the beautiful lyrics make me think, I'd like to play this when Kathy and I have a wedding someday.
7:00 pm: I can get NPR again; returns are coming in. Kerry is down, but polls are still open some places. No real worries yet.
8:40 pm: I'm home, and we switch channels, always trying to get the latest. Kathy tells me I must stop groaning every time a state is called for Bush.
10:00 pm: The day is over for me. I am still holding out hope that my fellow Midwesterners will come through for me. But Wednesday, the day after the election—what a dark, dark, soul-crushing day it will be—I will remember what Martin Luther King Jr. once said: 'The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.'
