Election Day Diary of a Kerry Traveler
By Yvonne Zipter

By the time you read this, we will have a new president-elect. Or so I, and myriad others, are banking on and why we have traveled to Ohio or Wisconsin or used our cell phone minutes to call rural areas, trying to make sure everyone can get to the polls and knows why they should, why we have monitored polling places for illegal activites. Whatever happens, at least I know I did my part. What is my part?

4:30 a.m.: Get up, check e-mail to find out which polling places I will be monitoring in Janesville, Wisconsin, 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 for that ward, canvassers can get out there and encourage people to vote. I am monitoring wards 14-16. Ward 14 is the Hedberg Library, which I've made my home base: there's a restroom, WiFi hookup so I can monitor my e-mail, and a view overlooking the Rock River, which moves quickly, but almost imperceptibly from where I am, beneath a darkly clouded autumnal sky. But I am getting ahead of myself.

5:10 a.m.: Shower.

5:30 a.m.: Make coffee for my gal, who must go to work today and cannot join me. {:~( Then, run around like a loon only partially dressed (jeans? Who's got time to put their stinkin' jeans?), 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 I get caught in 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 a.m.: Kiss Kathy goodbye and leave the house a half hour late.

6:05 a.m.: 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 a.m.: 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 a.m.: I get in the long line on 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 a.m.: 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 you are heckbent on voting this time around. NPR fades just after the Rockford, IL, clock tower, and I switch to the "Take Back the White House" (TBWH) CD that Kathy burned for me. "The revolution starts now," sings Steve Earle.

8:00 a.m.: The Janesville exit! I don't really know where I'm going (it is actually one of four Janesville exits, a sign tells me), but I remember seeing Racine St. on one of my maps and get off there. Minutes later, I find the Hedberg Library. 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 call to leave her a VoiceMail message to assure her I've arrived at my designated location safely. My 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 a.m.: I call Kathy to let her know I've arrived safely and we share encouraging stories we've heard.

8:45 a.m.: I pull back into the library parking lot, eat some breakfast. "The people have the power," sings Patti Smith.

9:25 a.m.: Into the library to scope out the Internet access. I log onto a library computer, do a quick check of e-mail.

9:45 a.m.: My first official poll check! 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 a.m.: Back to the library, where I discover WiFi and 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 p.m.: 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, 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 TBWH CD. "No retreat, baby, no surrender." We are so taking out Bush!

1:30 p.m.: 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 from 8 to 9 p.m. on a "school night."

2:00 p.m.: As always, I am curious about gay life in the area, so I do a Web search. There seems to be a community center in town, but they don't have a Web site, so I'm not sure what they offer. Then I stumble on the turnleft.com Web site, where a controversy seems to be viewing about just how liberal or not Janesville is. Most commenters are of the opinion that it is very small town with a small-town mentality (i.e., not esp. liberal), but one woman was appalled at their judgment and mentions that when she and her lover moved to Janesville, they "immediately made friends who we remain close to, and will be close to all our lives. These include gay and straight people. Whole families including grandparents, children, grandchildren, and in laws." She adds, further, that "to say Janesville is hostile to gay people is nonsense. Among the most prominent and respected citizens are a number of gay people." I may just have to come back sometime and check it out!

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