Nantucket

Voting on Nantucket

In this election cycle, many of you out there may wonder about the political leanings of the voters on Nantucket and the actual machinations of how voting works over here. 

Despite the impression that many in the "real" world have of Nantucketers being rich, elitist snobs, the island votes overwhlemingly democratic and the election results over here show that with the democrats basically winning our district yesterday right down the line.  This may give you an indication that the actual voters on Nantucket do not possess the vast wealth of our visitors and/or the other 85% of property owners who don't get to vote here.  Those wealthy peeps (with some notable exceptions; John Kerry, etc.)  usually vote republican or is that not true? 

Anyway, Catherine Stover, our Town Clerk (and now Board of Selectmen candidate) reports that there are 7,999 registered voters on Nantucket.  Yesterday slightly more than 4,000 people voted.  So our turnout over here was almost exactly 50%.  Catherine also reports that the standard rule of thumb for Town Clerks charged with managing elections and censuses and such, is that for every voter, there is at least one adult non-voter.  SO,  we get an unofficial census count, based on voting participation, of approximately 15,000 to 18,000 people on Nantucket which is considerably higher than the actual census count of a little over 10,000 year-round residents.  It's also considerably higher than when I was a kid.  From September 1 to June 1 there was about 3,000 of us, no traffic, no parking problems and no one getting run over in the parking lot of the Muse nightclub on Saturday nights.  Ahhhh, the good old days.

 We go to the Nantucket High School to vote.  Built in 1988 (the year AFTER I graudated of course), the High School is used for all sorts of fun Town stuff like local board meetings, our annual Town Meeting, OUI classes, etc.  Pulling into the school is a challenge.   Surfside Road leading to the high school is usually mobbed with opponents and proponents and, evidently some candidates, that are waving and yelling and madly gesticulating and holding up all manner of signs and political paraphenalia like campaign posters, faux windmills (KIDDING) and other claptrap.  It's an accident waiting to happen I tell you.  When Doug Bennett was in his campaigning hey-day you can only imagine the chaos aorund the high school.

When you walk into the high school you are greeted by the first ladies of voting who sit at long tables arranged by the first letter of your last name.  These local ladies meet the voters each and every election (special and otherwise), offer you a tootsie roll, check you in and hand you a ballot.  They confirm your address and if you are from a family where all the kids look the same like mine, they'll say "Which one are you?".  I usually reply "the really good looking one", but they are used to my shenanigans and this hardly gets a smile anymore.  I probably need to come up with some new material.  They will tell you if other family members have shown up to vote yet so that you can return home with an air of moral superiority.

 You then take your ballot and wander into the little stalls that we all get to hang out in.  We don't have any chads  to punch  or levers to pull or even any screens to punch.  We don't get a curtain or other artificial privacy method.  We just stand next to one another in our little stalls and, using a permanent black magic marker, blacken the oval for the person or thing you are voting for.  I like to do write-ins and often encourage others to put my name in for Governor.   So far, no dice.  I seem to remember once being told that if you got like 25 write-ins they had to print you up in the election results.  You can't buy that kind of publicity.

Once done, you wander over to the second ladies of voting to check out.  They give you a sticker that says cheerfully "I voted!" (and more candy if you want it) and I run through the same tired jokes about being the best looking one in the family and then they say "tsk, tsk" and shoo me along.  You then walk to the exit with your ballot and give it to Manny Dias.  Manny has been collecting the ballots for as long as I've been voting, so 20 years anyway.  The only difference these days is that Manny just gets to watch the machine that scans in the ballots.  You can look at it however and tell how many people have voted.  It was at 1,804 when I went through at about 1:00 PM.   Rumor has it that Manny is in his 80's but you wouldn't know it to look at him.  He owns a landscape business and still goes to work everyday.  Often you'll see him on his hands and knees somewhere laying brick - year-round.  He is also famous for making Nantucket Lightship baskets.

 As you wander back to your car, you get to run into various and sundry other people much like you get to do in the grocery store and then, if the police haven't ticketed you for parking on the bike path or in the fire lane, you get to get in line with all the other SUV's to get out of there.

 I guess that you'd think that on an island as small as Nantucket, almost everyone would vote.  Unfortunately that's not the case even though I have to imagine that it's as easy to vote here as anywhere.  I've often made suggestions about how to increase Nantucket's voter participation.  But since such suggestions usually revolve around setting up fried dough and corn dog stands and having balloons, animals, clowns, a Tilt-A-Whirl ride and a freak show, my suggestions have thus far fallen on deaf ears.  Obviously voter participation is the weaker for it.