Safe Kathryn Lee

SAFE

By Kathryn Lee

Iwalked with my mother to the polling station in November 2016. We live on a fairly idyllic street: neighbor’s bushes lining the sidewalk, flowers unfurling in the springtime and the perpetual hum of lawn mowers in the summer. Despite this, I always preferred to stay inside. I never liked risking the off chance I’d run into a neighbor — or worse, a classmate — who would engage me in a mutual ritual of politely looking the other way as we passed each other. My mother went — and still goes — on daily jogs when the weather permits. I did not — and still do not — accompany her. But for Election Day 2016, I did. “I don’t really think Trump’s going to win,” she told me, swinging her arms as we walked. She’s two inches shorter than me, five-feet even, and has the same thick mop of hair. When she moves, it’s as if she’s propelling herself with the power hidden in every single limb and cell in her body. In short, she takes up more space than me. “But let’s go, just to be safe.” It was a 10-minute walk from our house to the end of the block, where voting took place in a squat, red-bricked firehouse. The polls were on the second floor. It was silent when we walked in, an hour or two before they closed.

I remember thinking about the absurdity of the elderly poll worker taking the time to check our voter registration address. We lived 10 minutes away on foot — if there was something wrong with our registration, we could gather the requisite documents and be back in well under an hour. But there was nothing wrong with our registration — and I was surprised that my mother, opinionated but apolitical — was a registered voter at all.

Voting took five minutes.

The sun had set by the time we exited the firehouse, but there was still a paleness to the sky as if it were reluctant to turn fully, scared to hurtle us forward into the future.

I went to bed just after midnight, with the images of states turning pale, then dark red, burning the back of my eyelids. I woke to school hallways with teachers moving sluggishly through them, clutching styrofoam cups of coffee, and kids who knew little but knew something had irrevocably changed in their lives.

There are, of course, many reasons for Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 — none of them satisfying: voters were lured into a false sense of security, xenophobia was too rampant to control, the Electoral College, a shocking red wave among both suburban voters and voters of color. If Petrarch were alive today, he’d abandon Laura for the lady Politic. —

My mother voted for the first time in 2016. She voted again in 2020, and when she did, she did not say it was “just to be safe.” Her shoulders were tense, her glasses off when she hunched over her accordionfold mail-in ballot and bubbled in her answer. The 2020 election — and the aftermath of November 3 — is indelible to everyone who lived through it. Few can forget Maricopa County, or Steve Kornacki and John King with their magic maps or the cryptic tweets by pundits on accepting the results. Counting ballots took days to weeks, even in my home county, which was Associated Press–approved red before sliding into blue. Every single text, direct message and FaceTime call I had was about the election. —

What came two months after the election, almost to the day, is equally indelible.

I voted in my first election in late October, using a mail-in ballot that traveled over five hours to reach me. Here are the things that are happening as I write this, on November 6, 2022:

My local board of elections has confirmed that they have received my ballot.

I live in an America where the Democratic Party controls both houses of Congress and the presidency.

There is no federal law restricting or banning abortion.

The wealth gap between the haves and the have-nots is growing.

Misinformation and skewed methods of information dissemination are exacerbated.

There are far more issues at play, and it is most likely that neither party will respond substantially to all of the items. By the time these words are published, we will know the outcome of the midterm elections. And we will know whether I voted just to be safe or just to be safe.