Primary matters: Election day in Mason County

Kirk Ericson | Aug 04, 20220

Salesman on train: “How far you going, friend?”

Harold Hill: “Wherever the people are as green as the money, friend.”

— “The Music Man”

Writing a newspaper column sometimes requires fishing. You get an idea the fish are biting 20 yards off the point during the outgoing tide, so you go there. You sit in a boat. And you wait. And you wait.

I’m no fisherman, but I’ve heard this is how fishing works.

My idea was to spend some of primary election day sitting in a camp chair watching the comings and goings at the ballot drop box outside the county administration building on 5th Street in Shelton. An alley runs along the north side of the building and the box is near the alley’s entrance. You can sit on the sidewalk along 5th and get a full view of anybody who’s watching voters deposit their ballots.

I got this watching-the-ballot-watchers idea from sitting through a three-hour video of a gathering June 30 called the “Mason County Townhall on Election

Integrity.” It was an all-you-can eat election conspiracy buffet, but I could only eat $5 worth. And it wasn’t just me. By the end of the three hours, many seats had opened up in the front of the meeting space inside Veterans Memorial Hall.

A fellow named Douglas Frank has been making appearances around the country the past year casting dark aspertions on the results of the 2020 election. He’s a high school math and science teacher from the Midwest, but Frank’s passion these days is making people doubt American elections, specifically the election a certain former president lost by 7 million votes.

Frank came to Shelton in June and emceed the town hall, which drew about 50 people. He started the gathering biblically. “Like the Proverbs says, ‘When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice. When the wicked rule, the people groan.’ I think that’s the situation that’s going on. There’s a lot of groaning going on. I think we’ve got some wicked people ruling us. We’ve got to fix that …”

Frank wore a red, white and blue bow tie. His look and manner are reminiscent of the character Ned Ryerson in “Groundhog Day.” Frank’s a fellow who’s endlessly earnest, endlessly cheerful and endlessly clueless. As he waded deeper into his theories about the 2020 election, I imagined his bow tie spinning wildly and shooting white-hot sparks.

The town hall wrapped up with video clips of the 5th Street alley showing activity on Oct. 30, 2020, at the ballot box outside the county administration building. People were shown walking toward the box, some taking pictures of themselves with their ballots in front of the box before they put the ballots through the slot.

As one fellow walked up, one of the town hall speakers narrated the video: “He’s actually going to remove his mask and he’s going to lick the envelope. He’s sealing the envelope. And he’s going to take another picture as it goes in the slot. Very familiar activities that we saw across the country in ‘2000 Mules.’ OK? Maybe he’s a very excited voter or maybe he’s, uh, you know …”

Catching the next flight to Hungary so George Soros can give him $150 and a big slice of goat cheese in return for defrauding the U.S. electoral system?

A speaker at the town hall asked for volunteers who could keep an eye on county ballot boxes during the election, so I figured people would show up at that alley drop box — it’s one of the busiest in the county. I set up at 11:45 a.m. Tuesday. I put the chair on the side of the sidewalk, away from foot traffic, took out my notebook and lowered the brim of my cap. It was quickly apparent: No one was watching the drop box. No fish were to be had.

I sat there for nearly an hour.

A driver soon pulled up along the street next to me. She had one of those tree-shaped deodorizers hanging on her rear-view mirror. She rolled the window down and said, “I’m glad someone’s watching the boxes.”

“I’m not watching the boxes,” I said. “I don’t think we’re on the same side here. I’m watching the people who are watching the people drop their ballots off. I want to see whether they interfere with voters.”

“Well, I’m just glad someone’s watching,” she repeated. She said she had suspicions about our elections and wondered how some people could have so many ballots that they couldn’t fit them all through the slot at the same time. It made her wonder.

“Maybe those people have a lot of voters in their house,” I said.

Maybe those people were asked to mail the ballots on their way to Safeway to get milk.

She shook her head. “We each have our own beliefs,” she said.

“That’s true,” I replied. “But we shouldn’t have our own facts.”

“But we do have our own facts,” the woman said. “And that’s why we have our own beliefs.”

And that, dear reader, might be the best summation of why we’re in the condition we’re in.