SOME THOUGHTS ON THANKSGIVING

 Summary:  We have many things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving:  our weather, the President's re-election and the strong Democratic performance at the polls, the decision of the Riverside County BOS to look into the fiasco that was our election in this County, victories for marriage equality, and the continuing vigor of the body politic that emerged from the Mayflower Compact.

By:  Paul S. Marchand


Best Thanksgiving wishes to friends, family, and to those who touch my life.

It has become almost a tradition in American society to take stock today of those things for which we are thankful.  It is as if our traditional practice of Lenten introspection had been uprooted and transferred from the season of Lent to those final Sundays after Pentecost just before Advent.  (Caveat: there is an Advent post in our future; I can’t help it.  I’m Episcopalian.)

So, with the greatest of deference and respect, permit me to offer my own litany of things for which I am thankful this day.

THE WORLD AROUND ME
I’m thankful for seasonable and temperate weather this day.  I appreciate that in colder climes, there may be white stuff falling out of the sky.  Having spent three years in law school ten miles from Lake Michigan, and having experienced the reality of so-called Lake Effect snowstorms, I appreciate 80° weather at Thanksgiving.

THE POLITICS OF AMERICA
I’m thankful that Barack Obama was triumphantly reelected to a second term as President of the United States.  I’m even more thankful that Democrats did so well in senatorial and Congressional elections.  I’m thankful for Tammy Baldwin becoming the first out lesbian Senator in history.  I’m thankful that that obnoxious little Tea Party congressman Alan West got his pink slip from constituents tired of his Red-baiting antics.  I’m thankful for Elizabeth Warren, Heidi Heitkamp, and Claire McCaskill.  I’m thankful for Alan Grayson’s comeback; I’m thankful for Raul Ruiz and Mark Takano, and I’m thankful that, with the exception of North Carolina, every single battleground state in the last election went blue.

THE SUPERVISORS’ DECISION TO REVIEW RIVERSIDE COUNTY’S VOTING INFRASTRUCTURE.
I’m thankful that after four utterly botched elections, in which the Riverside County Registrar of Voters could not seem to find rear end with both hands, our Board of Supervisors finally took some proactive steps to try to figure out why the handling of election 2012 in Riverside County was, to put matters mildly, the most rotten show imaginable. 

There is something simply unacceptable about the fact that we can know on election night our president will be for the next four years, but that two-plus weeks after the election, we don’t even know who will be mayor of Cathedral City.  This is now the fourth election in Riverside County where Riverside County has been last, dead last, of all of California’s 58 counties, in getting its electoral shit together. 

After four fiascoes, it is clear that Riverside County needs to get real about its piss-poor electoral infrastructure.  There is simply no excuse for failing to provide the ROV with sufficient resources to be able to ensure that ballots are counted timely and accurately. 

There is simply no excuse for requiring that ballots be transported more than 100 miles from Blythe to Riverside simply to be counted.  There should be regional counting centers, equipped with ample numbers of scanners. 

Four successive election screw ups by the ROV have left Riverside County voters with significantly impaired confidence in the integrity of the electoral process. 
Finally, it is also necessary to spank Secretary of State Debra Bowen.  For years now California has set its face resolutely against electronic voting, citing fears that the process could be hacked.  In truth, there exist secure un-hackable electronic voting architectures which, if adopted, would allow for rapid, accurate voting.  By engineering such architectures to produce paper receipts, the integrity of electronic voting architecture could be protected. 

As it is now, California once again demonstrates her fundamentally schizoid nature: on one hand California leads the world in innovation, yet her government activities are often characterized by a stultifying, Luddite, technological conservatism.


DIAL “M” FOR MARRIAGE
Finally, I’m thankful this fall that three states whose names begin with the letter “M” embraced marriage equality.  Together with Washington, the states of Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota voted “yes” on marriage equality.  How far we have come in barely a generation. 

Just 20 years ago, the idea that Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David could go down to the local courthouse and get themselves civilly hitched was the stuff of visionary dreaming.  Today, the phrases “his husband” or “her wife” have entered the customary lexicon of American speech. 

Things have distinctly changed for the better when it is possible to hear an elected public official talking about his husband or her wife without fear of backlash from angry, homophobic wedge-issue extremists.

THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT
In elementary schools around the country this week, children will be dressing up in Pilgrim costumes to reenact the Plymouth Rock narrative.  While the Plymouth Rock narrative is, to all intents and purposes, a Yankee sectional myth that has little resonance south of the Mason-Dixon line largely because it ignores the Jamestown story that began more than a decade before, it still remains an astonishingly successful cultural story.  We may remain thankful that the body politic which emerged from the Mayflower Compact remains vital and vigorous to this day.

On this uniquely American day, let us always remember that gratitude is one of the noblest of human emotions.  Happy Thanksgiving.

-xxx-

PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  He serves as an officer of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee.  The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the California Democratic Party or any other entity with which he is associated.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.