SOOTHING THOUGHTS ON A SUNNY DAY

Yesterday was primary day here in North Carolina and at about 11 o’clock in the morning Susie and I set out to vote. We left Carolina Meadows by the south exit, turned left on Whippoorwill Lane, then right on Farrington, right again on Lystra Road, until we reached the North Chatham Elementary School.  It was a brilliant sunny day already in the 80s, and when we pulled into a handicap parking place, a cheerful, helpful man offered to let us vote from our cars. As his assistant went off to get the ballots, we chatted. He said it had been pretty busy – already perhaps 175 people – and he expected three or four hundred before the day was done.  He told me he is a retired forester who worked in Duke Forest for 35 years. It was as peaceful a scene has one could possibly imagine. There were no picketers standing just outside the limit line, no self-appointed poll judges there to harass Black voters.

 

Chatham County is one of 100 counties in North Carolina and I imagine there may be as many as 50,000 or 100,000 polling places nationwide.  The experience briefly gave me hope that representative democracy, such as it is, may survive here in the United States.

 

There were only four races on the ballot – three local races for Chatham County officials, about which I had no opinion, and a highly contested race for a Democratic nominee for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Richard Burr.  Susie and I voted for Cheri Beasley, formerly the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. The last report I saw, she had 85% of the vote so perhaps it was not absolutely necessary that we got out to vote, but I am glad we did.