Chapter 8: Vote Early (Part I)

For the first time in the entire year, Elaine was playing hooky from class—skipping out of Database Theory. Frog would be proud, she mused. Today’s class would simply cover the bland nonsense of object databases anyway, according to the syllabus. No tests were happening this week, unlike Statistics. Without a class to sit in and be bored out of her skull, or furiously write notes, she found herself restless. Circling the campus like a shark.

The campaign volunteers were out in force today. Ambushing students, alone and in groups, with pamphlets, buttons, pennants, hats, bumper stickers, and more often than not also clipboards. All manner of things to sign up for—so many that she found herself wishing for a stick to fend them off. Even with the surly glower that molded her expression, she still managed to laden herself with four different buttons, and twice as many pamphlets—not pennants, thank you, that’s tacky. And definitely no hats, “Do I look like I want a hat?” she almost barked at a Freshman trying to shove one into her arms.

Even Emily had her volunteers out on the highways and byways of ASU campus. Her team had a novel approach: don’t attack people with junk. Instead, they stood with their handheld signs near corners, off the edges of tables belonging to other candidates, smiling. Each of them wore a smart, well tailored suit with a pink tie and a single button displaying an Arizona flag (alternating radiant bands of yellow and red) with the words: “EARLY TO BED, EARLY TO RISE. VOTE EARLY.”

Although it was an interesting use of the phrase, Elaine wondered if Benjamin Franklin would want it back after the election season ended.

In spite of their radical departure from the rabid norm, Emily’s campaign dolls (every one was a girl) managed to gather small knots of people whom they plied the reasons why Emily was the best choice. After listening to a conversation, Elaine decided that she really needed to know a lot more about Emily if she was going to help her with this case. The technical and arcane aspects she could certainly handle, but she’d learned better than to dismiss the human factor.

And the volunteers made Emily seem very human. Almost superhuman.

“She’s been extremely strong in the extracurricular community here at ASU. For example, she’s worked hard to keep the grants that help fund clubs. We all love our clubs and we’ve been seeing a lot of budget cuts. Last year as Treasurer she acted along with Sundevil Extracurricular Resources to bring in more donors to make up the upset. As a result we now have twice as many clubs today than we did two years ago!”

At this point a small, mousy girl wearing a water polo t-shirt and jeans piped up with an almost soliloquy about her experience of a club she wanted nearly disbanding for lack of funding. “I won’t forget,” she said. “Without Emily coming to our rescue, the Sunday Social Club would have been up a creek without a paddle.” An obvious production, Elaine surmised, as her diction almost perfectly matched that of the volunteer—that and she was wearing expensive Puma shoes and not something boring like sneakers to go with her thrown-together outfit.

If anyone else in the group noticed the setup, Elaine couldn’t tell. After the little performance the group broke up, its constituent parts wandering off to discuss Emily among themselves. And, in the case of the plant, gravitated towards another group where she waited patiently for her part.

For a moment, Elaine felt torn. The volunteer—a bright-eyed bushytailed Frosh who looked almost constantly surprised—had been left by herself; but the would-be thespian had also shown her hand.

“Hi.” Too late. The well dressed volunteer noticed that she had been idling too long chewing on her thoughts and decided this was a good time to cut in. “Have you thought about who you’re voting for in this year’s student election?”

How to play this? In reality, she really didn’t think about it. None of the candidates really had any campaigns that intersected with anything she cared about. It wasn’t like there was a video game player who wanted to bring Massively-Multiplayer Online games to campus; nobody to offer bigger, better computer support—in short, she wasn’t even sure the student government did anything but sit pretty and act officious to no effect.

Drowning the midge in a deluge of her criticism of the entire system would probably put her into dummy-mode in a moment and end the conversation before it started. So, a different tact was needed.

Elaine summoned up her best role-playing spirit, put on an expression she hoped would convey skepticism and uncertainty and said,

“No. I’m not sure who I’m voting for yet.” She thought for a moment, and then added. “I don’t know very much about them.”

It was like a light bulb came on behind the volunteer’s eyes. Elaine could imagine the girl flipping through whatever script she’d memorized to find the proper passages.

“Well,” she said drawing the word out. “My name is Jade. It is good to meet you…”

“Elaine.”

“Well, Elaine, it’s fortunate that you came to speak with me today, because I can tell you all about the candidate that I support—” She tapped the button pinned to her lapel. “Emily Early. And, hey, wait a sec. Do you take Engineering Communication 110 at ten-thirty Tuesday, Thursday?”

“Uh. Yes?” Thunderstruck, Elaine went blank. She couldn’t figure out exactly what the proper reaction was to someone recognizing her from class that she couldn’t even remember. Communications class? She hated that class. It was droll, spiritless, and she saw little purpose in learning how to write an intra-office memo or step-by-step instructions—read the man page or stfu. She usually spent classes in the back, thumbing away at her Nintendo DS.

“Well, isn’t that something!” Jade beamed at her discovery. “Do you take notes on your phone? I always see you using it. I noticed that you’re really good at the assignments, but you don’t have a partner. Perhaps we can study together sometime.”

“If you want…we could go over that next class,” Elaine said. Her plan blown, she switched back to her normal behavior and relaxed a little. “Do you know Emily? I mean, you work on her staff, obviously. Isn’t that suit hot?”

“This?” Jade tugged on her jacket and ran two fingers down the length of her extremely pink tie. “Nah. It breathes. And Emily? No. I don’t know her personally, but she is pretty amazing. Have you heard about all the things she’s accomplished?” Elaine could almost hear the pages turning again. “She brought her small town values of hard work and perseverance to even the arena of her own dormitory. In her Freshman year she received acclaim as volunteer secretary of her own residence council for organizing numerous community building events and even rescued another student from death.”

“Huh, really? Who?” Now, that was something. Emily the hero. Elaine was surprised—she didn’t really seem like she had it in her.