By MARSHA MERCER
“That’s ridiculous!” the angry voter roared at me. “Who
do I complain to?”
It was Primary Day, and I was working as a city
Election Officer or poll worker at the City Hall precinct in Alexandria, Va. My
job was to greet voters and tell them something I assumed they’d already know.
“We’re having a Democratic primary and a Republican primary
today,” I said hundreds of times, smiling. “You can vote in one or the other, but
not both.”
For some voters like this woman, though, that was infuriating
news. She wanted to vote in both primaries and wasn’t giving up without a
fight.
The precinct election chief, overhearing her protests –
who didn’t? – showed her a sample ballot with the pertinent section of Virginia
Code about primaries: “No person shall vote for the candidates of more than one
party.”
She redirected her ire toward Richmond and asked for a
Democratic ballot.
It would be easy to dismiss her as dumb, but the story
is more nuanced. For one thing, she had plenty of company in her confusion.
By my estimate, about one in 10 voters at my precinct
Tuesday either thought there was only a Democratic primary or knew there were
two primaries and thought they could vote in both.
Virginia voters don’t register to vote by party and some
infrequent voters had forgotten how the open primary system works.
In Alexandria, called “one of Virginia’s most
lopsidedly Democratic bastions” by The Washington Post, the Democratic primary
is typically the decisive election for local offices. At the City Hall
precinct, of 904 ballots cast, 851 were Democratic.
The city of 150,000 residents had hotly contested
mayoral and city council races. Democratic candidates flooded voters by mail
and phone, knocked on their doors and stopped them at farmer’s markets. Local weeklies
carried pages of letters to the editor by neighbors asking neighbors to vote
for their favorite candidates.
The perpetual issue is development – how much and
where.
Residents of Old Town worry more new hotels and condos
along the riverfront will ruin the ambiance of the brick-walked city George
Washington frequented. Some voters are also fed up with ever-rising real estate
taxes.
But Alexandria faces mounting financial pressure for
education and social services in an increasingly diverse city where public school
children speak 120 languages and nearly two in three receive free or reduced
price meals.
On a day when other women candidates across the state
did well, incumbent Mayor Allison Silberberg, a soft-spoken and lonely opponent
of development on council, lost to pro-development Vice Mayor Justin Wilson,
who said when he announced his candidacy for mayor, “Preservation of the status
quo is not a vision.”
Wilson, 39, had strong
support among parents in the Del Ray neighborhood, while Silberberg, 55, was popular
with well-to-do retirees in Old Town, the Post reported.
There was a strong “throw the rascals out” mood toward
city council. A dozen candidates ran for the six seats, and two of four
incumbents seeking re-election lost.
Among the winning newcomers are a 32-year
old woman, a Sudanese refugee and a first-generation Mexican American.
Since the only Republican contest was for the GOP nominee
for U.S. Senate in November, several self-proclaimed lifelong Republicans reluctantly
asked for the Democratic ballot. They wanted a voice in city government, even
though it meant not having one in choosing the Senate candidate.
At least a few asking for both ballots were Democrats who
wanted to help Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine in his re-election bid by voting for
the weakest Republican. They needn’t have worried.
Virginia Republicans obliged by choosing Corey
Stewart, a Trump extremist who supports keeping Confederate monuments in
place.
Turnout in the off-year primary was light around the
state. But in Alexandria, about 23 percent of registered voters turned out – up
from 16 percent three years ago – even though it was a lovely spring day with a
huge parade and celebration just across the Potomac in Washington at midday for
the Washington Capitals.
There was no confusion about who won the Stanley Cup.
House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. famously
said all politics is local. Sometimes, as in Alexandria on Tuesday, local
politics is all.
©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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