November 5th

It's over, it's all over... the midterms I mean.

For the past thirty days straight, I have been plugged into the campaign machine turning out volunteers across the state of Montana. Yesterday at this time, 3 o'clock, I had called about four hundred members of the League of Conservation Voters to make sure they had voted. My googledoc list of committed LCV Volunteers would be a quick toggle away on my computer screen to make confirmation and follow up calls. Gmail a page tab behind, checking to see if I had any new messages from Washington, D.C., or Bozeman, Mt.

And now...

I'm just sitting at cafe drinking hot chocolate and waiting for an intern to meet me with the phone charger I lent him yesterday. Sitting around reminiscing. Thirty days ago I was cursing my damn ambitious spirit that lead me to take a job that would need such constant attention, non-stop rejection, a loss of pride and a lot of nerve. And today I miss it! I miss the call universe of strangers to reach out to, training volunteers to do the same, building relationships with them that would bring them back in to help out again. I was totally plugged in.

But now it's November 5th.

Our guys didn't get elected (another blog post, amen!), my coworkers are hung over, quite, depressed. They're either cleaning out the office or are at the ready for the Secretary of State to release the names of the twenty ballots that are being contested in Diane Sands state senatorial race -- she's only winning by 8 votes. The 8th vote happened right in front of me a few hours ago.

I got a call this afternoon from Laura, the Deputy Field Director for the Montana Democratic Party, asking if I wanted to help out with Diane's race. It had gone into recount and in every district that she would be representing, a handful of provisional, contested, and rejected ballots were being challenged. Those voters were being followed up with a call, maybe a voice mail, by the Secretary of State, Linda McCulloch, but nothing more. The ground organization for which I'm a part (in a strictly volunteer capacity because doing more while being paid by the League would be breaking the law) needed the names of those voters to do the manhunting needed to get them a new ballot before the 5:00 PM cut off time this evening. That meant a rapid amount of calling around to gumshoe for voters, and then doing a friendly interrogation to determine if we even wanted that person to recast their ballot! But first, Linda McCulloch would have to release their names.

Which she had refused to do. But not before some one in the campaign had learned of two people who's ballot were being contested. They were a ninety year old man in a nursing home across town and a young woman at work at REI (a recreational equipment store) at the time. An older gentleman associated with the campaign went to have a chat with an elderly man across town, and the head campaign organizer, Nick, brought back the young woman from where she had been at work. While chatting with Diane about their hopes for marriage equality legislation in Montana, this young woman's ballot and ID were being scanned in our office and sent to the court house. I saw it all. And I wished I could have stayed to help find voters should the lawyers get McCulloch to release the names. But my phone was dead and I wouldn't get the charger back from Parker until he could get out of class at 3 o'clock.
I went home, lugging all of my belongings from my now empty desk. For some reason, now home, I found myself in my favorite orange chair. Not a pressing matter needing my immediate attention. Not a coworker to commiserate with about non-stop campaigning or about an apathetic citizenry. My volunteers I would probably never talk to again, whether they liked it or not! No progress report requests from Laura in my inbox to guiltily ignore. I found I couldn't get back up. Instead, surrendering to November 5th, I closed my eyes for a little nap.