Election Night: Freebies for Voting

Satisfactions of casting ballot
fill heart and tummy alike

But free gasoline would have been nice


There had to be some payoff for getting up at 6 a.m. to cast a ballot before work – something besides that great satisfaction of voting.

And by the time I left the office about 6 p.m., the returns were coming in: Ben and Jerry’s, Krispy Kreme, Chick-Fil-A and Starbucks.

The trick was running the table, making a clean sweep on the way home without going much out of my way. The problem was dessert came first, so I walked two blocks over to the ice cream shop at Baltimore’s Harborplace, where just six other people were in line with the same idea.

I got a cup of Cherry Garcia, and walked three blocks to the garage to get the car, a slow stroll, a spoonful at a time. I’d finished by the time I reached the automated pay machine and tossed the cup in the trash.

Driving south, I reached the Krispy Kreme on Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie about 20 minutes later and ran into the first snag: A hand-written note on the locked door that read “Sorry Sold Out.”

But there were three women working inside, a dozen full trays of donuts in the display case, and a rumor that they were reopening at 6:30. But the sign didn’t say that, so I used my cell phone to call the corporate 800-number which a more permanent sign in the window suggested for reaching customer service.

The woman who took the call responded to my query by dialing the store, and I watched one of the trio inside answer. A few minutes passed, and customer service was back on the line with assurances that the donuts were almost ready – the free donuts, shaped like stars with red, white and blue sprinkles on top.

The problem, I was told, was that the special freebie donuts that had been delivered to the store were all gone, so the employees had to set up a new batch themselves. And at 6:32 p.m., one of them unlocked the door for the half-dozen folks who had been waiting under the building’s overhang or in the cars to keep out of a drizzly rain.

Donut secured, it was off to Marley Station Mall another three miles to the south, where I remembered a Chick-Fil-A restaurant. There, the clerk asked for my “I VOTED” sticker in exchange for the free chicken sandwich.

I protested, because I hadn’t yet been to Starbucks and thought I might need it. So I tore it almost in half, and handed over the 40-percent side – which proved a reasonable accommodation since I got the freebie.

Back to the car, and about a half-mile away at the Southdale shopping center, was the Starbucks. The clerk laughed at my tale of the sticker and said, “It didn’t matter. We operate on the honor system here.”

Another counter clerk handed over a medium-size cup of hot coffee. I picked up a couple of Splenda packs, poured in a little milk (the half-and-half container appeared to be empty), and headed east toward home for the last stop.

No, it wasn’t for a freebie – but that would have been nice.

I wanted a tank of gasoline.

But I got the next-best thing: A fill-up of regular at the near-bottom price of $2.12.9 a gallon.

As a believer in the conspiracy theory when it comes to national elections and gasoline prices, I knew in my heart it would be going up – if not tomorrow, real soon.

And just about now, down the road at the school where I’d voted minutes after 7 a.m., the polls are closing on a bit of history that I am proud to have been part of – with or without the full tummy and full tank.

Election Day: Precinct Report

Early voting in Maryland

means getting up early

Turning into the long drive toward my precinct's polling place at Chesapeake Bay Middle School near dawn, you had to wonder if it was Election Day: Just two ground-level signs were in place, one of them opposing passage of a constitutional amendment on slot machine gambling, the other for costume sales at a local party store.

Halloween was over, but the election in fact was in full swing – minus the usual crush of signs and the bustle of electioneering. There were plenty of voters, more than 60 of them lined up by the time the polling place opened for business at 7 a.m., and a steady flow of more arriving.

“I’m one of the 33 percent of voters in this state whose vote doesn’t count,” said Jerry Zazzera, referring to Maryland's Republican minority and waiting with his wife, Angie, to cast ballots and get the election over with. Unlike most of the early-risers, they were not heading right off to work afterward, but to a vacation.

“We want to relax now,” Angie said after they had voted, a CD at the ready in their SUV, in place of the political talk shows for a while.

“Our intention is not to listen to any of this throughout the day,” Jerry said.

Not that he was ready to abandon political talk entirely – first sharing his conservative-leaning views including that the Republican Party “empowers people to get out there and be anything they want to be,” while the Democrats, with “this whole redistribution thing” on wealth, “you take the spirit out of people for wanting to succeed.”

“Freedom is so precious to me – I served 11 years in the service,” he continued. “I feel Obama will castrate the military.”

On the Iraq war? “My view on Iraq is we have planted a seed that people in surrounding countries can see.”

There were probably a few Democrat-leaning voters in the growing line, but finding them became impossible when my interviewing was halted by the polling place’s chief election judge as improper on the premises (not that I was telling people whom to vote for), and who wanted to know who I was – and when he found that I was a blogger, declared, “Then you have no status.”

Well, I was at least a voter. And I got the deed done by 7:10 a.m., and was out the door.

By the time I was leaving the first electioneers had arrived at the perimeter spot where the closest politicking and signs are permitted – one of them, Maryland State Teachers Association employee Maura Taylor, promoting a “yes” vote on slots gambling that would ostensibly support education funding, and for Democrat Frank Kratovil for the area’s First District congressional seat.

“I’ve never been to a polling place that didn’t have 20 people standing out front,” Taylor said of the dearth of electioneers, and holding a pile of slots and Kratovil brochures in her hand.

Next to her, the lone electioneer for Republican Andy Harris had arrived and set up her signs, which included one for McCain/Palin .

The neighborhood is part of an oddly-shaped district carved out after the 2000 Census to bundle up many of Maryland’s Republicans. In the primary, the conservative state senator Harris bumped off moderate longtime GOP incumbent Wayne Gilchrest, who late in the general election campaign gave his anticipated blessing to Democrat Kratovil.

That has made the district’s congressional race the most-watched among the eight in Maryland this year.

Demographically, it looked whiter than the southern Appalachian towns from my recent two-week road trip. Among the first hundred voters, I did not see one person of color turning up at my precinct -- although the judges on duty included one who was African American.

I have a feeling that, at least in this district, I'm in the minority, too.