I was minding my own business, walking to class today at UVM, when I was stopped by a girl offering me a Peter Shumlin sticker.  I had a small roll in my bag, so I said no, I didn’t need one, and kept walking on my way.  Then, thirty steps later, I was again offered a sticker by a man.  No, I said, and kept walking.  Then, I was offered a sticker a third time.  Finally, I stopped to talk with the woman, to figure out why all these folks were offering me these Shumlin stickers.  

“There is a big rally at noon,” she said, featuring Shumlin himself.  

I’m a fairly involved student on campus, but yet this “rally” of Shumlin’s almost escaped my notice (I had class at the time, so I don’t know how many folks showed up… My guess is not many).

I enjoy being involved politically, with Democrats and Progressives alike, but I got involved because of my own volition, not because someone encouraged me too.  If someone had encouraged me to, I would have become more involved, and sooner.  

It is odd to me that walking around campus there are more posters for Dubie (recruiting paid “co-pilots”) than for Shumlin.  To me, the campaigns seem to be saying: “College students are more interested in money than politics, and they will sell out their ideals for even just a small sum.”

This seems to have some truth to it: Rich Tarrant got so many young folks involved with his campaign because he offered them laptops in exchange for a summer of service… But I know that there are way more students who would rather act on their principles than their material desires (esp. at UVM), but you just don’t see them getting roped in by the more liberal campaigns.  Why not?  

Well, their lazy, yes.  And also pretty intimidated sometimes.  I remember before I got involved, I thought I might show up and be useless to campaigns who had better, more experienced hands available to them (I quickly learned that you earn accolades just by showing up, and doing a good four hours work well makes you a hot commodity).

But talking about how uninvolved and disengaged younger voters are won’t compel them to change.  Honestly, many of my friends are just waiting for that push out the door (and sometimes I think they get a little tired of me trying to give it to them), and a good ad campaign on college campuses, not asking for votes, but for involvement, might actually generate some interest and results.  

It might go something like this:

“Hey! College kid!!

Sick of politicians who do nothing about climate change?!  Sick of being a criminal for smoking a plant?!  Sick of paying thousands of dollars to go to school, only to enter a jobless job market?!

WELL, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Politics in Vermont isn’t like politics in Cali or Jersey: Here, you might bump into your Senator in the coffee shop, and you might see your Governor at City Market.  Here, your voice gets heard.  Here, you can change things for the better.  

So, what are you waiting for?!  Get involved!”

College students care.  And most of the time, all they can do to show it is walk around campus holding signs and beating drums.  They love it!  But here is something grander, not just in scope, but in effectiveness.  

The key is: Most college students feel like politics is something stuffy and distant.  Here, it is not.  Show them that they can make a difference, lead them to the door, and compel them, with a direct ask, to get involved.  

Then, Peter Shumlin won’t have to be so lonely when he shows up on campus.  

A few funny things, actually.  I thought I’d share some of the more interesting moments from the “all-candidates” debate this afternoon at St. Mike’s:

Even before the debate began, while the candidates were assembling on stage, Cris Ericson appeared to be reading Shumlin’s palm. (I wonder what she saw?  Victory in his future?)

During the debate, both major candidates stuck pretty well to their skits (although, notably, Shumlin started off his opening remark by addressing the tenor of the campaign, noting that it was a radical departure from the civil discourse of Vermont politics) and did not really say anything new.  

As for the minor party candidates:  I feel like Dan Feliciano and Dennis Steele were the most on-target of the four who attended.  Feliciano kept it purely to business (his trade) and was almost, as my friend commented, like a salesman.  He seemed very much focused on getting us to buy his ideas.  And admittedly, he said a lot of things that made good solid sense and was a good presenter.  If he had an elected office under his belt, or a history of public service, I’d be interested.  

Steele was brilliantly clear in his message and was a very clear presenter as well.

Em Peyton and Cris Ericson both skipped around a lot, esp. Peyton.  I think a one-on-one with Peyton would be a lot more illuminating than hearing her in a timed debate.  She seemed very flustered.  

Ericson made some good points, but had some odd moments as well.  And very wonky.  In order to come across powerfully in a quick answer, you really need to focus on big-picture it seems.  Towards the end, she hammered Shumlin on his apparently anti-marijuana stance (despite his earlier response that he would decriminalize small amounts) and then turned to Dubie (who is explicitly anti-pot) and said she hoped he would run for President in 2012 (to which he replied: “No.”)

But in general it was good to hear the other ideas get out there.  No matter what, it seems the debates really aren’t going to be that meaningful (either you have just Dubie and Shumlin duke it out, the same lines, every other night… Or you have one-minute responses and lots of off-topic remarks), so you might as well hear from everyone, every once in a while.  

Best line of the night though: When Feliciano said he had no problem with decriminalizing a small amount of pot, “whatever you call it these days…” Shumlin chimed in: “I believe it’s called a Doobie!”  

   

Has anyone else thought that the tone of the Governor’s race seemed to be getting a little too aggressive?  

I thought that the Vermont News Guy expressed it well when he said it’s “post-modern politics come to Vermont.” (http://www.vermontnewsguy.com/not-so-fine-whines)

But it’s not just the candidates.  I almost feel like it is the candidates’ media reps that are ramping this up.  Is it not good enough just to be the plain-spoken yet civil Vermonter not just willing but wanting to run a positive, issue-oriented campaign?  

Even if it is, it looks like the Freeps and even folks here are turning it into a pitched battle just by billing it as one.  When the media asks for sound-bites and back-and-forths, they will get that.  The Fourth Estate needs to demand substance with backing, not just quick sales pitches.  

Now, I suppose it is too much to ask for Lincoln-Douglas debates, but can we at least forgo the Shirley Sherrod-style YouTube videos and the exploitation of voting records and misstatements and just look at the substance? … Once we get some of that substance, that is.    

I skipped out of school today to go up to the St. Albans’ District Court (no, it’s not what you’re thinking) to help out with the recounting of votes in the Democratic primary for governor.

I figure I’ll get the opportunity to sit through dozens of lectures on Roman History and Modern Poetry, but how often does a state-wide recount take place? (Recent history suggests every two years, but I think that the reality is much less often)

Now, the first thing that stuck me as I entered the room was that, apparently, there are were not a lot of youth jumping at this once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity.  At age 21, I could have been safely considered the grandson of almost any one of the other volunteers there, and maybe the great-grandson of a few.

And while there were about forty folks in the room, it seemed that most everyone knew most everyone else.  Greetings ranged from inquisitions about the well-being of the family, to inquisitions about the well-being of the farm, to passed-down bastardizations of bonjour.

The whole operation was slow to start: The official start time of 9 AM passed and the organization process started around 9:30.

The crew was divided up, with two groups of four working each of the tabulators (to count up the scanned ballots) and three groups of four at tables counting by hand. There were a few volunteers appointed to walk around and supervise, as well as a few who were tasked with opening ballot bags and distributing the ballots to the counters.

Now, it was a complex process that took  a while to get off the ground, but the situation demanded the utmost care, lest even one vote be counted twice or even one vote not be counted at all.

For the hand-counters, only one town would be open at a time.  Until all the ballots from that town were counted and put away, another town’s bag could not be opened.

The first step with each bag was to sort out the Democratic ballots from the Republican and Progressive ballots, which was something that had been handled before by whoever counted the votes to begin with, but which we checked over again to ensure no errors.

The number of Democratic ballots was added up, to ensure that we had as many as the town had reported as cast.  As we counted, we grouped the ballots into stacks of fifty.

Each table of four was then given a stack of fifty and two tabulation sheets.  The pair on one side of the table would go through the ballots, reading off the vote for governor one at a time, one passing the ballot to the other, and waiting for confirmation before moving on to the next ballot.  The pair on the other side of the table would be marking off the confirmed votes on the tabulation sheets.

When all fifty ballots were tabulated, the recording pair would compare sheets: Any discrepancies? Recount the stack.

If both volunteers had the same numbers, then all four would sign the tally sheets and the two pairs would switch positions: Those who had tallied would check the ballots and those who had checked the ballots would tally.  Thus each stack of fifty votes was counted and checked twice.

Then the four tally sheets, all concurring, would go off to be checked against one another, and then added to a master tally, which was checked again.  All told, the numbers from the sheets were checked by at least four different people, as well as against the three other tally sheets.

I regret not taking any pictures of the scene  there; with weathered Vermonters hunched over ballots and sheets of paper, it looked like Norman Rockwell had painted the SATs. Quite a sight.

All told, it took us about 4 hours to complete the whole recount in Franklin county.  I’m not sure how it turned out (if anyone went up or if anyone went down) but the last word was that it was pretty close to the previous total.