Voting Day

Yes Mary Engelbreit! 

Today is election day in my state.  I am a poll worker and will need to be on site by 5:00 a.m.  I have my wagon and am busy packing. I bring my cloth director chair and pillow because I am not sitting on a folding chair for 16 hours. I have a foldable side table for my beverages. I bring kleenex, sanitizer, stickers for kids, a small first aid kit and a book I never have a chance to read.  

The day of the election I bring crock pots. We have a new precinct captain. He will be our third in three years. Ours is the largest polling location and we have several different ballots for different wards in the city as well as townships that surround us. I don't know if they leave because of the pressure or the workers, lol. 

Anyway, when he called he said "be sure you bring enough food for the day". I didn't say anything and he said "Or do you guys have a potluck". I said yes and he said "See you Tuesday". Obviously a man (sorry gentlemen). The next question should be "What are you bringing".  Will we have six crock pots of sloppy joes? Will we have seven platters of cookies? Hmmm

I hope I can behave myself at the polls. In 2017 our state drew new voting maps that do not reflect the parties of my state. My state is a 55/45 split and our districts are drawn in funny shapes (on that map our district was shaped like a duck and was fodder for evening talk shows) which made the voting districts 90/10. 

The Supreme Court ruled our maps illegal. We still used them to vote for several years until they ordered public hearings to have them redrawn. The taxpayers paid to have to professional tax drawers (or whatever), chosen by the two parties to draw the new map. On the last day a different map all together which was drawn up in a closed office in secret came out (which is in our state constitution) and we went to 80/20. 

The Supreme Court ruled those maps illegal. We used them to vote in several elections and had to draw new maps in public by October 31, 2025. They started public hearings on October 1 and on October 31 they whipped a map that no one saw onto the table and we changed to 79/21.  AND they added a referendum making it harder for citizens to try to put issues on the ballot. A lose lose. And these maps will be in use until either 2030 or 2039. 

At this point I have decided I will be dead before we have fair voting maps in my state. And it makes a difference. We actually had two changes to our state constitution that passed a few years ago and our current leadership is trying to overturn them because they think we are too stupid to know what we are voting on. 

Meanwhile. We have a police scanner. The other morning, the last week of October, there was confusing traffic on the band for security at a local federal research center.  Eventually we figured out our own story which was confirmed by a news report. 

Several farm workers were in a nearby city staying at a hotel. They are here on H2B visas which allow them to work in agriculture for 10 months and return home for two months. They can renew the visas for a total of three years.  According to reports, the visas expire for the two months home this November and they were planning to return home after working last week.  

Border Patrol, which has a presence in my community due to proximity to Lake Erie, took approximately 70 men into custody.  They marched them around the research facility which was empty due to the shutdown, searched them, etc and then turned them over to ICE agents who put them in groups of 20 and 15 to load onto buses.  They were transported to Detroit according to my scanner and the news report and no one knows what has happened to them.  

That night I went to bed in my fancy bedroom with my fluffy pillows and cozy quilt and wondered where they are sleeping. I wonder if they received their last paycheck. When I got up and made coffee and breakfast I wondered what they were being fed. Or if they are being fed.  

This isn't our first rodeo. A local nursery was raided during trump's first term.  They had a hard time getting new workers until they figured out housing for H2B visa holders. The first time the employers were named but not prosecuted.  This time the employers are not being named.