Sunday, November 01, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Maybe you can be next governor
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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This was going to be a serious discourse about democracy and the importance of voting, and all that civics-lesson stuff.
But you hear that high-minded slop before every election, don't you?
So instead, we'll recount the experience of A.S. Cooper, who found himself in a polling booth a couple of years back during a local election.
We shall consider this Roanoke native the Everyman disenchanted voter.
Cooper is 55, lives in Southeast Roanoke and remodels homes for a living. Most of those are in the Raleigh Court area.
He drives a minivan, has a golden retriever named Mack and a mutt named Skeeter. His girlfriend is an office worker and his regular brew is Old Milwaukee. More often than not, he votes for Democrats.
This is the same A.S. Cooper, by the way, who complained about denominational prayers before the Roanoke City Council last year. The city council stopped those, and Cooper was reviled in our letters to the editor.
You could say he's a regular-Joe guy who stirs the pot a little and who likes a good laugh now and then, too.
But that Election Day, standing before the flimsy electronic gizmo that now passes for a voting booth, Cooper was not laughing.
Truth was, he had a hard time finding a candidate on the ballot worth voting for.
So Cooper committed a radical act that plenty of disenchanted voters probably have fantasized about from time to time.
He voted for himself.
"I wrote my own name in," Cooper said. "And it took me a while longer."
It's not easy to cast a write-in vote on those fancy gizmos, he learned.
You have to find the write-in ballot button. Then you have to hunt and peck for the letters of your candidate's name on a not-very-user-friendly on-screen keyboard.
That's because the letters are arranged A through Z, rather than like a typewriter or computer keyboard.
"So it's really kind of hard to do, actually. It took me a few extra minutes," Cooper said.
In the meantime, a line of voters had formed. They were trying to cast their ballots, too. Probably they were trying to get to work, or home for dinner.
Cooper felt a bit guilty because he'd delayed them.
So like any reasonable person, he made some apologies.
"I said, 'I'm sorry, but it takes me a while to vote for myself.' "
That got their attention.
And it's when Cooper realized that he wasn't the only disenchanted voter performing a civic duty.
"And the lady at the front of the line said, 'Well, what's your name? I'll vote for you!' I swear. And I cracked up."
I cracked up, too, when I heard this story. It's one almost any voter can identify with.
Who hasn't walked into a voting booth now and then and felt absolutely passionless about the candidates on the ballot?
"I felt that way in the presidential race," Cooper told me. "I wasn't happy with either candidate." (He didn't vote for himself, though.)
I've heard more of that sentiment in the lead up to this election than any in recent memory.
Does anyone out there -- party stalwarts excluded -- feel a great deal of honest-to-goodness passion for Republican Bob McDonnell or for his Democratic opponent in the governor's race, state Sen. Creigh Deeds?
State Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican running for attorney general, is a church-and-guns nut who says he will defend state laws he considers constitutional, but not the ones he doesn't. He gets to decide which is which.
His Democratic opponent, Del. Steve Shannon, came across in debates like a passionless nerd who's way out of his league.
And who are those people running for lieutenant governor, anyway? Is it true somebody's actually seeking a second term for that do-nothing office?
We can do better than this, folks.
All of us should vote, but we don't have to accept the choice we're getting.
Cooper has hit upon a way to send those politicians a message -- one they'll never hear if you merely stay away from the polls.
I doubt I'll vote for myself Tuesday.
But I just might cast a write-in ballot, or two.
For A.S. Cooper.
