Voting Done

Isn't this a great local Voting/Halloween combination display?  That Vote For Pedro shirt is a deep cut (from the movie Napoleon Dynamite).

Here's DH dropping his ballot into the official drop box this morning. Now to check to make sure they receive it on the county website. I love how convenient the vote by mail/dropbox is, it really works for us. I really wish that it was this easy for everyone in our country.

Now we can put our "I VOTED" stickers on our phones. That's one of our dumb family traditions, we stick them on the back of the phone case and they usually last until the next election. This time we each got a different sticker from our county. These are from a contest that they ran a couple years ago. I'm excited to have Otter 841.

I'm really feeling hopeful for this election and hope that you've made a plan to vote if you're eligible. If you've got a complicated ballot to work on, this is a helpful resource to start researching the issues you get to help decide.

18 Days

 I've been using my hands up lately on painting and writing Postcards to Voters. Mostly I've been sending them most of the way across the country to Georgia. It's so easy to do (not according to my hands) and I feel like I'm doing something to help, hopefully, maybe, etc. I work on painting these colorful cards and think that if I received one in the mail, where I could see a fellow citizen of mine took time to make something and send it to me, I'd get up off the couch or whatever and go and actually vote. It would totally work on me if I received one of these. 

I hope that a high percentage of the people who receive one of the thousands and thousands that all of us postcard writers are sending actually do get out there and vote, like now, early, or on the day, November 8th. 

Have you checked your registration?

Have you asked your friends and family if they've checked their registration, especially if they've moved recently? 

Can you vote early?

Yes, that's a Pantone Project postcard in the picture, a little spoiler-y hopefully it's already arrived.

56 Years

 I was listening to yet another podcast, The Experiment, and they had an episode that really struck a nerve, 56 Years. If this embedded link works you can listen to it here:  

It's based on this truly remarkable essay in the Atlantic by Vann R. Newkirk III, American Democracy is Only 55 Years Old and Hanging By a Thread. 

The author's mother was born in 1964, (just like me), but it might as well have been a world away with how utterly different our lives were. The Voting Rights Act which passed in 1965, brought our country closer to having an actual representative democracy up until it was gutted in 2013 by the Supreme Court. And every year since, we're moving further and further away from that goal of an actual representative democracy. Not everyone believes we should be one. And unfortunately it's those people who fervently disagree with that specific goal have captured our courts at every level now. That means it will have to be a legislative fix, and that means Congress. Which seems impossible given the slim majorities in both houses the Democrats hold, and the filibuster too, but then...so did the Voting Rights Act back when it passed. 

From the Senate history page:

Once the bill emerged from the Judiciary Committee, it faced a filibuster on the Senate floor. On May 25, the Senate mustered the necessary two-thirds vote and achieved cloture by a margin of 70 to 30. The next day, the bill passed 77 to 19. 

Hard to imagine that we could get the 60 votes now required for cloture.  (See the filibuster can be changed!) I have to say even with that stark reality Newkirk's essay left me more hopeful about the future.

The quilt above was one I made in the month after 9/11 twenty years ago.

Please Vote

 

After writing Postcards To Voters for a few years now, I finally get the chance to write to voters in my very own state. It's really really easy to jump in and join up in the effort if you're interested or have some time on your hands. I find that it's nice to feel like I'm doing *something* more than following the news or writing and calling my elected reps.

It's also interesting that a lot of the addresses I was given are in little towns we drive through on the way from here to there along highway 5. It's good to be reminded that registered Democratic voters are all over this big state, even in the places you wouldn't necessarily expect them to be.

I really hope the color explosion from the Inktense watercolor pencils is enough to notice these and get the recipients to return their mail-in ballots to vote NO on the ridiculous recall of our governor. He's literally up for re-election **Next Year** and this election is costing us, the taxpayers $276,000,000.  

If you happen to be in California, please vote no on the recall and make sure your friends and family do as well.

November, November

Happy November, it's one that's I've been looking forward to for four years. 

The entire state of California, which is where I live was mailed an absentee ballot. So that's how we voted this year. We dropped our completed ballots off in one of the many convenient ballot drop boxes, and done. Easy peasy, no waiting in line and worrying about catching Covid. I really really wish it was this easy for every single American citizen. It should be, and it's not, which is not fair--on purpose. Which is even worse in my opinion. 

It was nice that they gave us an "I Voted" sticker in the absentee ballot packet. I put it on the back of my cellphone for now.

Then after we had dropped the ballot in the box I wondered if it had been picked up. It was super easy to track my ballot online which was pretty cool to be able to see where it was in the process. They even gave me a digital sticker:

The monthly marker image above is another Snapseed creation, combining two photos and a bunch of edits. It's this one:

plus this one:

 

Of Course I Voted!

Here is week 22, of the year long six-word memoir quiltlet a week project. Utilizing the voting receipt and "I Voted" sticker to commemorate the big happening of the week.

I love sewing through paper, how it sounds and how it looks. I know it isn't the most stable and long-lived manner of attaching paper to fabric, but I like the immediacy of just sewing it right on.

The words say: "Of Course I Voted! Did You?"