Voting with Ethan
March 4, 2008
More than a month ago Ethan asked if he could go with me when I voted for president, so this morning instead of dropping Ethan off at school we went to our local precinct to vote. We arrived at the polling place just after eight and were greeted by a poll worker who asked, “Democrat?” Ethan quickly said, “No, Republican.” The poll worker laughed and pointed us to the Republican primary table to get our ballot.
Here in Dallas we don’t have all of the fancy voting machines, just ‘fill in the bubble’ systems. Ethan wasn’t too impressed with the technology, but he was interested in all of the names on the ballot: Mike Huckabee, Hoa Tran, Hugh Cort, Fred Thompson, Alan Keyes, John McCain, Ducan Hunter, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul and some guy named Uncommitted. Who is Hoa Tran?
I explained that I was going to vote for Alan Keyes for a number of reasons including a) he is a conservative b) I can’t stand McCain and c) I like the idea of electing the first African-American president. He wanted to know why I was voting for someone who couldn’t win. I tried to explain, but he didn’t get it. I am not sure I get it.
Ethan, who is six, asked ‘what are McCain’s chances against Hillary? How about Obama?’ I suggested that we might have a better chance against Hillary. Of course he pressed, “why?” I tried to explain that Hillary has lots of baggage, i.e. sort of like your history picking up your clothes versus your sister’s history (she is two months old) picking up her clothes. He got it right away, “nobody knows if Obama picks up his clothes?” Exactly, I exclaimed. LOL. Next Ethan asked, “So why don’t we vote for Hillary so we can win?” I told him I am a Republican, so we vote in the Republican primary. We will let the Democrats choose their own candidate without our interference. Ethan then asked, “Can I be a Republican?” As I dropped him off at school I answered, “We will see…” :)
