This morning I left a little early for work and headed to my local polling place to cast my vote. The four old women running the polls were cheerful and helpful, the electronic machine was annoying, but effective.
I walked in and stared at the presidential tickets longer than I thought I would. See, I had decided some time ago that I could not vote for Barack Obama/Joe Biden or for Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan. A little research told me I couldn't vote for Gary Johnson, or for Jill Stein or for Randall Terry. I intended only to abstain.
The sign outside the voting booth reminded me that write-in votes will only be counted if they are for candidates who have declared their intent to run, and Lord knows I didn't know who fit that criteria anyway. Still, with the full knowledge that my vote wouldn't count I selected write-in and used the complex wheel system to type the following name.
JULIA STEGEMAN.
Julia Stegeman is a 90-year-old woman from Cincinnati, Ohio. Well, she lives in Cincinnati but if you asked her where she's from she'd say Fayettville, Ohio. She's probably a Democrat. She was born on the heels of World War I. She witnessed, from Ohio, Pearl Harbor, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq. Her husband, who died in 1996, was a veteran.
Julia Stegeman lived through the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the counter-culture revolution, hippies, Woodstock, Nixon, JFK etc.
She's been daughter, wife, mother, grandma and great grandmother.
While Julia Stegeman supports many liberal seeming policies that I do not personally agree with, I voted for her anyway, because I trust her. She's brilliant. She's measured. She's not reactionary. She has infinite faith in the potential good of people and the good of this nation. Still, she's not naive. Thanks to her age, she's also got a great sense of perspective.
She plays a mean game of Scrabble.
In case you you haven't figured it out, Julia is my grandmother, or Mema as I call her. She's 90. She's never missed a bill payment. She still balances her own checkbook and lives alone under her own care. She's part of what we've dubbed the "Greatest Generation" but unlike so many in her age bracket, she believes that my generation and the one after it have even more potential for greatness.
Alas, Julia won't win, and in fact history won't even record that she got a vote. But I looked over the options they gave me to choose a president, and found them wanting. I saw an incumbent who doesn't respect my freedom of religion. I saw a challenger who doesn't know what he stands for. I saw a trio of third party candidates that just didn't seem like someone I could support.
So I took my vote and cast it for someone I believed in. Officially, it doesn't count. Maybe even in the objective sense all I've done (as a conservative) waste a vote against Obama. Maybe it doesn't matter either way.
I voted for an amendment to Kentucky's Constitution, I voted in the House and State House race for established candidates. I abstained from all the local races I didn't follow well enough to know.
But I voted my conscience on the presidency. I believe in Julia Stegeman, and she believes this country can be better than it is. So do I, and that's why I voted for her.
