Beaglesonian Yard Sign Poll #2

It's a five mile drive to our polling place, over a different road than I traveled yesterday. The yard signs here seem to be equally distributed between Democrat and Republican candidates for various local offices, but I saw no Trump or Hillary signs. This tells me that the people of my township who were intending to vote for either Trump or Hillary are not proud of it. I saw one Libertarian sign, the first one I've seen this fall, and maybe ever. It was for Johnson, and all the other signs on that property were for Democratic candidates. This tells me that Johnson will take as many votes away from Hillary as he takes away from Trump, since half of the known Libertarian voters in my township usually vote Democrat. The half that usually votes Republican don't have yard signs because they don't have a real yard, and their house cannot be seen from the road. We won't mention their names, they know who they are.

We arrived at the polling place at 4:00 PM, just in time for the after work rush. We considered going earlier to avoid the crowd but, four years ago, a man who lives close by told me that there was a long line all day, from when the polls opened until they closed. There was a bit of a line this time, but it didn't extend out the door like it did four years ago, and we were in and out of there in a half hour, a third of the time it took me four years ago. It would have been sooner, but I split my ticket this time and had to vote for each candidate individually. I don't know if the shorter wait time was due to a lower turnout or if our election workers have gotten more efficient. The furniture seemed to have been rearranged, and they might have had more booths set up.

Since I was splitting my ticket anyway, I voted for a Democrat to serve on the County Road Commission. My hypothetical wife went to school with him and remembered that he seemed like a nice guy, which is more than I knew about the other two candidates. I also voted for a Democrat county prosecutor because he was running unopposed. I believe these are the first two Democrats I have voted for since George McGovern in 1972, and that was only because I didn't like Nixon and hadn't discovered the Libertarian Party yet. Perhaps my experience with you two guys at the Institute has given me a greater tolerance for diversity.

I haven't been watching the returns on TV, but I suppose I should check them after I sign off here, since they should have it sorted by now. It will take a couple of days for the local stuff to appear in our newspaper because, since they started printing it in the Sault, we get all of or local news a day late.