a mother’s Election Day tale
A town was working to recall its renegade school board. That requires a lot of signatures.
There is no better time and place to collect signatures than Election Day at a polling place — or at least that is the case in places where there is no mail-in voting, since mail-in voting has caused in-person voting numbers to plummet.
Far from being the great emancipator, mail-in voting seems to have the impact of discouraging some voters from voting and encouraging other voters from voting. There is a strong political bias involved in who it discourages and encourages. It also is fraught with problems, is time-intensive and labor-intensive, and makes for election that last weeks before reliable results are produced.
Polling places are good for signature collection because you know that the person entering the polling lives in that precinct. You know that person is registered to vote. You know that person is engaged in the process. These are benefits to the person passing the petition, a benefit that is harmful to the established interested at any period in time.
Well, some lady working as a clerk inside the polling place did not like the idea of that town’s school board recall and wanted to disrupt the diligent signature gatherers. The signature gatherers were a group of mothers.
First it was, “You can’t be here!” — electioneering laws tend to be very selectively enforced, this election official was particularly selective and bossy.
Then it was, “You can’t be there either.”
Then it was, “You can’t call out to people passing by.”
Then it was more of you can’t do this, or you can’t do that.
What was the signature gatherer’s calm response, you may ask. I’ll tell you. She said to then would-be tyrant: “Show that to me in writing.”
That’s one of the most powerful things you can say to a person who wants to claim illegitimate authority over you: show that to me in writing.
It puts the onus on them. It puts the hurdle in their path. And it does it with simple ease in the form of a completely calm and reasonable request.
Don’t take it upon yourself to justify your behavior by coming up with the writing that defends what you are doing.
Don’t take it upon yourself to prove yourself.
You are living your own free life. Put the onus on the controlling person trying to stop you from doing that: show that to me in writing.
In a free country, you can do anything until your right to do so is proven otherwise — the burden of proof is always on the person trying to get you to stop, provided that you insist on enforcing that age-old policy in your life.
Well, that “show it to me in writing” line took care of the situation for a while, but then the controlling election clerk returned with what controlling people often resort to: threats.
She threatened to call the police. She said there would be a big fine.
Where do these people come up with this stuff? Big fine for a mother collecting school signatures? She might as well have threatened to throw her in the gulag with the January 6 prisoners, or to have her sent to the uranium mines.
At one point in this mother’s life, that threat would have scared her and snapped her into compliance, but this was a different era.
2020 has changed many of us. Many of us have since learned to rise to the occasion. If that does not yet describe you, I have news for you — there is plenty of tyranny in our midst that you can cut your teeth on by rising to the occasion.
And the mom collecting signatures did just that to the controlling election official, threatening to call the police and fine her.
The mom said, “Call the police.”
“What?!”
The control-freak election official had no idea what to do in response to that.
Who responds to a threat to call the police like that?
The mom continued, “In fact, when they arrive, I’ll report YOU to the police for harassing me.”
It worked.
Calm, certainty worked.
Recognizing her authority over the situation worked. It almost always works.
But I can tell you this — that is not where that mom started out. It is not where I started out. It is not where anyone starts out.
Face Masks in One Lesson is designed as a way to help you get started flexing those muscles — on the topic of face masks, but also in so many other areas of life.
It was a book I was able to write because braver people than me once taught me to flex my muscles better. Their courage was contagious. All courage is contagious — yours, mine, and your family’s — which make courage the most important contagion of the past 2 years, and the contagion that the bad guys really don’t want you to spread.
Guess what. . . they can’t stop you.
Grab a copy of Face Masks in One Lesson, and let me help you get there.
Allan Stevo