Election Lessons and Memories
Dave reviews his personal ethics when it comes to elections and an experience he still laughs about years later.
Dave Schechter is a veteran journalist whose career includes writing and producing reports from Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East.
In my first previous professional lifetime, as a mild-mannered reporter for a mid-sized Midwest newspaper, I made small wagers on election results with a local city manager.
I won some. He won more. I learned not to bet on elections.
So, when I am asked, as happens the closer we get to Election Day, who will win the presidential vote, nationally and in Georgia, I answer: I don’t know.
That’s not a dodge. I do not know.
Surveys of Jewish voters suggest that roughly 70 percent nationally identify as or lean toward the Democratic Party. A decade writing about Atlanta’s Jewish community leads me to think that locally the figure is 60 to 65 percent Democratic.
I do not answer when asked who I will vote for. I do my level best to put that subject in a mental lock box and leave it there until I vote. Short of not voting at all, it’s the only way I can be as fair as possible to candidates I write about.
I stopped voting in party primaries some years ago. General elections are where the rubber that is my journalism ethics meets the road that is civic responsibility. I may have skipped one or two, but usually I vote.
I do not sign petitions. I do not donate to political campaigns. When a friend said that she did not know my political opinions, I took that as a compliment.
I first reported election results in 1972, on a high school radio station. That also was the last year I engaged in partisan politics. I tell a story from that experience because I find it amusing.
I was canvassing in a suburb north of Chicago on behalf of a Jewish congressional candidate, Abner Mikva, a Democrat.
For those who are unfamiliar with canvassing, you go door-to-door, carrying a clipboard, asking people if they are registered to vote and whether they are inclined toward a particular candidate. Not having access to the family car, I did this by bicycle.
One day, I performed this campaign grunt work in a neighborhood with a fair-sized Jewish population. I wore a red T-shirt with the candidate’s last name emblazoned in large, white letters.
At one home, the door was answered by a woman who fit the category of senior citizen. I gave her my spiel. Clearly, something did not translate.
“You want to sell me a mikvah?” she asked.
Now I was confused. My Jewish education had not included explanation of a mikvah. So, the humor in the woman’s question — “You want to sell me a mikvah?” — was lost on me.
Back at home, I told my mother what happened and asked, “What is a mikvah?”
She got a chuckle out of that.
Fifty-two years later, this story still gets a laugh from Jewish audiences.
Back to the subject at hand: Who will win the presidential vote, nationally and in Georgia?
Honest, I don’t know.
I know this: The nation will be no less divided the day after the election than the day before.
Edward Lindsey is a Republican and former Georgia House majority whip, who served for two-and a-half years on the state election board. He spoke more philosophically than politically during a “non-partisan election update” sponsored by The Temple’s Rothschild Social Justice Institute.
“The process is more important than temporary outcomes,” he said. “When the process becomes suspect . . . that’s when a society truly starts to decay.”
One hallmark of the process is that when the votes are counted, the losing candidate accepts defeat and the nation moves on — contrary to the circus that followed the 2020 election, and the riot intended to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021.
The country has hard slog ahead, if it wants a greater sense of unity.
“It begins with all of us,” Lindsey said. “We don’t spend enough time moving outside of our comfort zone.” In those words, I heard echoes from 2016, when stunned supporters of the losing candidate huddled in their silos, head in their hands, unable to comprehend how the other candidate won.
“You’ve got to get used to talking to people you don’t agree with,” Lindsey said. “Go back to those friends you’ve written off.”
Election Day is Nov. 5. Maybe that work can begin on Nov. 6.
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