Republican election "reform"

I have been voting for sixty years, and I am not willing to watch our free, fair, and secure election process get dismantled in pursuit of fixing a problem that does not exist.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square, an election for which there is no credible evidence of massive voter fraud or election tampering. The Republicans lost the US Senate in the same election. Republicans won many of the House seats they won, and they won or continued control of many state legislatures, through gerrymandering largely engineered by them.

Every single person who claims interest in improving our elections must be willing to publicly articulate their conviction that the ideal election system allows and encourages every single citizen to vote, and that at the same time assures our nation that our elections are as secure and trustworthy as they can be.

Every single person who works to improve our election system must publicly foreswear any partisan interest in any changes to it.

The person, whether a citizen or an official, a Republican or a Democrat and something else, who cannot state and honor those principles should get out of the way and shut up. They have no business involving themselves in this matter. None.

Our democracy is at stake, and you know it. Fight for it.

Better than planned

In the summer of 1970, I drove east from Oregon to Pennsylvania. Packed in my baggage was my absolute certainty that the next summer I would drive back to settle down in the West for the rest of my life.

I had been a Westerner for only five years—three of them as a theological student in San Anselmo, California, and two as a youth pastor in Medford, Oregon. Compared to my native Iowa— home for my first 22 years—America’s West Coast was exotic to the point of feeling forbidden, a lingering remnant of Eden. My change in geography had begun the creation of a new me.

I’d be in and out of Pittsburgh in twelve months, yet another degree packed in bags stuffed into my little brown Cougar.

In twelve months, I was driving out West again…this time to pick up the things I’d left there and bring them back East, to Pittsburgh, my new home.

Things had not worked out as planned. Partially because of my own shortcomings, getting that degree clearly would require more than a year. I had successfully completed the class work, but the dean discouraged the thesis project I proposed and I fiddled away hours buried in Hebrew Psalms. I took on a new church job in the spring, considerably sapping my waning energy for academics. My new call was fun and challenging—the scholarly work, drudgery.

I had even begun to appreciate Pittsburgh,. I had made friends, and I was discovering and enjoying southwestern Pennsylvania’s natural beauty. The changes in me kick-started by living in the West were being refined and secured in the realities of America’s rust belt.

Then, in the spring of 1973 I met my wife-to-be. In a bar.

Our meeting had been planned. Another woman I’d seen a couple of times decided I would be better suited to her college friend, Maxine. She and I had arranged to meet for a drink at a spot near Duquesne University, where Maxine was taking a graduate class. When I arrived, Maxine was in the booth with my date, whose plan turned out to work perfectly.

Maxine is a native Pittsburgher. Our courtship introduced me to more of Pittsburgh than I had yet discovered. As I fell in love with her, I fell in love with her city, experiencing it through her love for it. We married in April, 1974.

Life and call soon took us further east to the D.C. area, then back west to Illinois, and finally, in 1989, east again to suburban Cleveland. Those who know professional football will appreciate how difficult it was for Maxine to agree to call Cleveland home. But she did, and we are home here forever.

Along our way we bore and raised two precious daughters for whom northeast Ohio is home, as in, “home is where you grew up.” They have not lived here for years, and likely never will again.

We considered relocating in the West for the first year or two of our marriage. But its lure was moderated by our growing sense of satisfaction with where we were. The birth of children and a deep desire for them to be able to know their grandparents and extended families soon quelled thoughts of moving any further than we already were from our roots.

Though the years, Maxine and I have often traveled out West. We have revisited my old haunts in the Bay Area and southwest Oregon, and expanded our shared geography to include other parts of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. In the 1980s we discovered the desert southwest, particularly northern New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch. We will never get enough of that landscape and culture. We once talked—for about five minutes—of moving to Santa Fe.

The West remains exotic and almost forbidden. I have convinced myself that if I had moved back, I would surely have lost my fantasy of its being Eden reconstituted. Home is real, hopefully beautiful, but often disappointing, wherever it is.

Every time I revisit my personal Eden—including our Eden-in-the-desert—I remember the time I thought I could live there.

Out of Town: a two-minute scene

 Out of Town

Ralph and George, two late-middle-aged white men, meet almost daily in the same booth at the local coffee shop to catch up on each other’s activities and the news. Ralph has missed the last three mornings because he had to go “out of town.” He is already in the booth when George comes in and slides into the bench facing his.

GEORGE

Hey, Ralph…sorry I’m late. Got tied up on the phone.

RALPH

That’s okay. I just got here myself. Ordered your coffee.

GEORGE

Thanks…you came back to town just in time for some nice weather.

RALPH

Yeah…I even walked over today.

(Pause)

GEORGE

So, where ya been?

RALPH

Oh, I just had to go help Dave and Sue with some home repair projects. I tell you, these kids don’t know how to fix even the simplest things.

GEORGE

Yeah, I know. How are they? Sue’s expecting, isn’t she?

RALPH

She is. Doing great. It’ll be a boy in May.

GEORGE

A boy! Way to go, grandpa! You’ll like that role.

(Pause)

But what a screwed up world that kid’ll be born into. I am so worried about our future.

RALPH

That’s for sure. You don’t know who you can trust…especially the folks in Washington.

(Both sip coffee.)

GEORGE

Yeah, and after everything we did to get Trump re-elected, Biden and the Dems are about to take over. They’ll ruin everything. I guess Wednesday night sealed it for them. Or Thursday morning. Either way, we’re screwed.

RALPH

Sealed the steal, I’d say. Trump didn’t lose; his election was stolen. That’s for sure.

GEORGE

I guess…but you know that I’m still not sure it was. A lot of things about it are questionable, but not enough to change the outcome. Biden promised the world, and lots of folks bought it. We just have to accept what happened, go on from here, and work hard to get Trump re-elected in four years.

RALPH

Hard to wait four years when we know he won last year. Everyone knows it. Look at all the accusations of fraud and cheating. You just can’t ignore all that!

GEORGE

I’m not ignoring it. But whatever may have happened with the election, you can’t justify what happened at the capitol Wednesday afternoon. That bunch of crazies who thought they would get away with attacking it, destroying stuff, and everything. Plus threatening senators and representatives… even Pence! There have to be other ways to make things right.

RALPH

Like what, George? The swamp is so deep and so dark. We can’t trust what seems to be in plain sight. We can’t get what we need by being nice.

GEORGE

So you think storming the capitol was okay, was right? I hope not.

RALPH

Well, no…not really. But when Trump gave that speech—did you hear it?—it’s not hard to see why people got so riled up. I mean, he’s our last hope of taking America back from the libs, and we aren’t a bit ready to let them take him from us.

GEORGE

So, you do think Wednesday was okay? I know you pretty well, but you’re surprising me.

RALPH

Okay or not, folks heard about the crap coming down in the capitol, marched up right up to it, saw people breaking in to try to stop it…well, it was—it must have been—hard to stand back and watch. Too much at stake…

(Pause. Waitress stops to offer refills, but they wave her off.)

GEORGE

So, Ralph…where have you been the last three days…?

RALPH

Not in D.C., George, if that’s what you are suggesting. I wouldn’t do that. My heart was there, but I wasn’t. Call Dave and ask him…

GEORGE

I won’t call Dave. I have to believe you.

(Blackout)