I may end up regretting this or being disappointed, but I am an intern at the Victory Center for the Republican Party of New Mexico.Yep, it is a call center and I hope I get to do more than sit there making phone calls.
I keep hearing that this will be the most important election of my life. Will it? Maybe. I think the current election is always the most important.
The most important election of my life was around 16-years ago when I ran for city council in Sand City. I decided to run too late to have my name on my ballot--so, I was a write-in candidate. This meant that I would have to work twice as hard to make sure people were aware I was running. I got a list of the registered voters in Sand City and I knocked on every single residential door in the city. This wasn't impossible, because Sand City is the second smallest city in California with about 125 registered voters. I found several people who where registered to vote in Sand City, but had moved (like the mayor and one of the City Council members adult children, who had moved away. Both came home to vote, though, and I doubt they voted for me.) I, also, met people who had moved into Sand City since the last election, and I was able to help them get registered. I, also, had pens imprinted with: VOTE for Tina Gardner" and I created a flier explaining what it meant to be a write in candidate and how to vote for me. Thinking about it, it is pretty cool that the entire cost for my campaign was less than $100.
I waited to go vote until shortly before the polls closed. As I went into the Sand City City Hall building, there were two elderly women manning the place and they were talking to a man. They told him that Sand City had had the best voter turnout the city had ever had. They were over 75% voter turnout and usually the city did well if they had 40% of the residents vote. They were telling him that there was a write in candidate and that many of the voters that day had said they were voting because I had personally contacted them. This was before absentee ballots and early voting and they said that, oddly, Tina Gardner had not come in to vote yet. When it was my turn, one of the women asked for my ID, not my name. She looked at my driver's license, found me on the list, gave me the ballot, and I went into the booth to vote. I heard her say to the other woman, "It's her!" Like I was truly someone important and I smiled.
Because I wasn't on the ballot, the night of the election, during the news coverage, my votes were not counted and it appeared that the two incumbents had won. One of them got 59 votes and the other got 54. I already knew that is how it would appear, yet, it was still sad to not see my name listed. I had to wait nearly two weeks for the nearly 100 ballots from Sand City to be hand counted. Unofficially, I receive 57 votes. Officially, because not everyone who voted for me did it correctly (You have to write the candidates name IN exactly and you had to remember to punch a hole in the ballot next to my name....) I got 53 votes and did not win. It was the closest city council race in the history of the small town.
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