Election Night - Kinda, Sorta

by Pa Rock
Cultural Explorer


It's Tuesday night on Okinawa, but back in the States it is very early on Tuesday morning and the polls are just opening for the 2010 mid-term elections.  I voted absentee several weeks ago and mailed by ballot back to Pineville, Missouri, where, hopefully, it has already been tallied.

This isn't the first time that I have cast an absentee ballot from Okinawa.  The last time was in the general election of 1972 - the presidential election in which Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern.  I'm proud to say that I voted for McGovern.  Of course, it would have been hard to have admitted that at the time.  The U.S. military, my employer, was in the bag for Nixon - damned near openly - and they did not easily tolerate any liberal tendencies.

Back at that time I was a young officer with the United States Army.  The local officer's social roster had my name spelled wrong - I forget exactly how the spelling went, but it was unique.  The spelling was so unique that when I started receiving unwanted mail from the Republican National Committee, it was very noticeable that their misspelling of my name was the same as the Army's misspelling.

Imagine that?

For those of you too young to remember - Nixon was a corrupt slimeball.  He got his a few years later when he became the first President ever to be forced to resign from office.  If only the country would have followed my example and voted for McGovern...if only the military would have kept its nose out of politics...if only Tricky Dick's mother would have practiced better contraception...if only Checkers would have been a cat!